Page 85 of Love and Other Lost Things

Mom turned back around and picked up the spoon, plunging it back into the chili. “We never discussed the day Dad died.”

Jane looked at her sideways. Did this really matter right now? Maybe Mom had hit her head yesterday. Or was this her way of processing the trauma? “Mom, Matteo is waiting in the living room. I’m not sure this is the right time to talk about?—”

“Your father, he never took very good care of himself,” Mom interrupted, as if she hadn’t heard Jane. “So much red meat all the time. Barbecues with the guys. And then the smoking.” Mom slowly shook her head. “Two packs a day for thirty years. It was only a matter of time before he went into cardiac arrest.” The beef sizzled in the pan. Mom gave it another toss. “Matteo reminds me of your father that way. He’s a smoker, too, right?”

“Yes, but…” Jane’s heart hammered. “I can’t wait around for Matteo to keel over and have a heart attack,” she hissed. “Dad was sixty-three.”

“No, you can’t wait,” Mom agreed. She paused, cocking her head. “Did you know that a very high level of nicotine in your system can cause cardiac arrest?”

Jane stared at her. “So, what are you saying? I’ll just hope Matteo smokes a bunch of these at once?” She yanked open the drawer where Mom had been keeping Dad’s cigarettes, but it was empty. At least Mom wasn’t holding on to them anymore. The drawer still smelled though, a little like the man out in the living room. Jane shuddered and slammed it shut.

“Of course not. It takes far more nicotine than you could smoke in a couple of minutes to cause cardiac arrest.” Mom picked up a bowl on the back of the counter, next to the sink. She spooned some chili into it and gave it a good stir. “Excuse me one moment.”

Jane heard her footsteps tap down the hall, followed by Mom’s voice offering Matteo some lunch. Her voice was so pleasant, so soothing, so like the way Jane had learned to talk to him over the years. Calm, so as not to upset him or set him off.

Matteo grunted his thanks, and Jane heard the clink of the spoon on the side of the bowl.

Okay, so maybe the fact that Mom was serving food in the middle of this crisis made sense after all. Hopefully, it would stall Matteo for a few minutes. Jane could catch her breath, think of a plan.

Mom returned to the kitchen empty-handed. “Your father, he loved chili, too.” She sounded sad now, almost wistful. “I sent some with him in the thermos on the day of his fishing trip.”

Jane stared at her. Why was she making chili if it reminded her of her dead husband?

“It has a strong flavor, my chili. I make it extra spicy. Men like your dad and Matteo can handle the spice. It makes them feel manly.”

This conversation was getting weirder. “Mom, maybe you want to go and lie down?”

“Oh no. I’m perfectly fine.” Mom gave the pot another stir. “All those spices, they can hide a lot of secrets. If you burn the meat or buy the wrong kind of beans. Nobody will notice if you make it nice and spicy.”

Had Mom burned the chili? From down the hall, Jane could hear Matteo’s spoon scraping against the bowl. He’d certainly make it known if the chili didn’t taste good.

“No,” Mom mused. “It’s not possible to smoke enough in one sitting to cause cardiac arrest from nicotine.”

And now they were back to the smoking again. Jane eyed the kitchen door. What if she snuck out the back? She could go and get Scarlett and make a run for it in her own car. It was risky, Matteo could call the police. But then she remembered what Hannah had said about Ed and the other officers. Maybe they’d at least be willing to give her a head start.

“But,” Mom cut into her thoughts again, “you could concentrate the nicotine down into a liquid. Boil it and let it condense. All you need is a bunch of cigarettes with the filter torn off. And then you could put the liquid in something with a strong flavor.” She picked up a sponge and began wiping the counter. “Something like chili.”

Jane’s gaze flew to Mom’s face.

Mom kept wiping the same spot on the counter, over and over. “One bowl of spicy chili and a couple of minutes is all it would take.”

“Mom…” This was hypothetical, right? There was no way that Mom was suggesting that?—

“They didn’t even bother doing an autopsy with your father. Someone in their sixties, out of shape, who smoked two packs a day. Why bother? And I didn’t want that, of course, as his widow. Cardiac arrest, they’d ruled it right there. And that was the end of it.”

“Oh my God.” Jane gripped the counter, her vision blurring. “You poisoned Dad?” she hissed.

“That day I saw you on a video call with all those bruises on your face.” Mom closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to remember it. “I had no idea you’d been in that situation for all those years. You had nowhere to go. No way out. And neither did I.” She set the sponge in the sink. “I realized in that moment that it would go on forever if I didn’t stop it. There was only one way to get you out of there—you had to come home.”

Jane stared at her mother, her whole body shaking. This couldn’t be real. Could it? Could Mom really have poisoned Dad’s chili so Jane could finally come back home?

“How do you even know about this? Did you google this?”

“I forgot to bring a book the last time your father wanted me to come to the lake with him, so I read one of those Graham Smith thriller novels he had in his bag. That’s where I first learned about it. And then later, I looked it up on one of the computers at the community center to see if it would really work. They don’t require an account or login at the community center.”

Jane heard the clink of a spoon on a bowl down the hall. Her gaze swung to the pot bubbling on the stove and then to the empty drawer where the cartons of cigarettes used to be. “The chili you just gave to Matteo…” Her eyes widened.

Mom nodded slowly. “They didn’t do an autopsy for your father. But someone who is young, in their early forties—they might investigate a death like that.” She shrugged. “But all they’d find in his system is nicotine.”

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