Page 188 of One Big Little Secret

It feels like Schrodinger’s cat. If I don’t ask, he might be fine. He might be recovering. The ugly truth doesn’t have to exist if I don’t call for it.

But dammit, I need to know.

She doesn’t cry, but her chest heaves. For a second, I wonder if she’ll have the breath to tell me.

Her hair falls limply around her face. She takes a strand and pulls it roughly, twisting it around her delicate fingers.

“Salem?” I tilt her face up so I can read it properly, searching in her eyes for answers the way astrologers watch the stars.

She releases a shuddering breath.

“I… I don’t know,” she says, still twisting her hair around. “It just doesn’t make sense. We were out and it was a normal day, Patton.”

Fear grips my chest and I inhale deeply, all I can do to keep my voice level.

“Look at me,” I tell her, and finally she focuses, two pinpricks of awareness gleaming through the shock. “What did the doctor tell you? Whathappened?”

She presses her lips together so tightly I can’t see them.

I grit my teeth with effort.

It’s not that I want to rage at her—hell, I want to wipe the sadness from her eyes and make sure she never feels it again—but there’s this jagged vibration in my chest that needs to come out.

She inhales and wipes her dry, red eyes.

“It was a normal morning,” she says quietly. A whisper, really. I pull her closer so I can hear her. “I swear he didn’t eat anything awful. He didn’t have anything I didn’t.”

“So they think it’s food poisoning?”

“No, it’s…” She swallows so hard I see her throat dip. “More like regular poisoning.”

“What the fuck?” I barely remember to keep my voice down as other people look at us. “What do you mean, regular poisoning?”

“I don’t know. I don’tknow!One minute, he was fine. The next, he’s throwing up everywhere and I couldn’t—” She tears at her hair. I catch her wrists to hold them still, pressing them gently to my chest. “I should have known something like this was bound to happen,” she says, more quietly this time.

“Salem—”

“We know I’m bad luck. It follows me everywhere. I just thought it would hurt us, not Arlo. I didn’t think it would ever come after him.”

I resist the urge to shake her.

“Salem,” I say gently. “That’s crazy talk, all right?”

“Is it?” Her eyes are damp and she shakes her head. “Then how did thishappen? Tell me.”

Not because of some crazy bad voodoo curse bullshit, that’s for sure.

But she’s upset.

I’m upset.

The last thing we need is to give in and make this whole situation worse.

What I need to do is find out what the hell happened before I go insane.

Before anything else happens to Arlo.

“It’s not bad luck, so stop saying that,” I tell her again. “You’re not bad luck. You’re the best damn thing that ever happened to me. We just need to find out how the hell he wound up poisoned.”

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