Page 192 of One Big Little Secret

“What are you boys not telling me?” she demands.

If I tell her now, it’ll bowl her right over.

Evelyn Hibbing is her oldest friend.

Her oldest fucking friend who just played us like a fiddle.

“I promise there’s a reason,” I say. “Please, hurry.”

She nods and heads out of the room. Then Archer rounds on me.

“You want to tell me why the hell you’re upsetting Mom like that? So Evelyn squeezed us for some money before she heads to Miami—so what? And what’s this about poison? It’s frustrating, yeah”—his jaw clenches until his temples pop—“but it’s not like we can’t afford it. We can settle this bullshit later.”

The lead in my gut turns to ice now.

“Miami? What the fuck? She told me she was going home.”

“Nope, she was definitely headed to Miami. I dropped her off at the airport. She joked about sprinting off to the Bahamas after catching some sun. I guess she took a long trip there with her husband, back when they were young.”

I think back to my last conversation with Evelyn, about how she wasn’t looking forward to heading home because it would be a couple more months before Minnesota would defrost enough to do much in the garden.

My vision starts swimming.

It’s almost my turn to be sick.

Something is gravely fucked up here, and we need to unravel it ASAP.

23

COUNT YOUR LOSSES (SALEM)

The hospital bed looks like a huge white ocean holding my tiny sleeping boy.

Arlo’s eyes are closed now. His eyelids flutter against his cheeks, a sign that he’s dreaming.

God, he’s so pale he’s almost fading into the bedsheets.

Only his hair—the same rich coppery dark brown shade as Patton’s—stands out.

I gently sweep it away from his face. There’s a tube running up his nose and a bandage across the back of his hand where another tube was placed.

According to the doctors, he’s stable.

But stable doesn’t mean okay.

It just means he’s not about to drop dead. Who knows if that could change.

I just need to keep watching him. Keep assuring myself he’s okay.

The seconds crawl by, torture in every passing beat.

His shallow, soft breathing doesn’t change.

They assured me he isn’t in a coma and sleeping like this is natural with the meds he’s on, but nothing about itfeelsnormal.

“I love you, big guy,” I whisper over the distant murmurs of the hospital.

Foxglove poisoning.

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