Chapter 2

Leo, charging out in front, didn't even glance at the white sheet on the floor. He lunged straight at me.

The cop holding me didn't have time to stop him before Leo's leather-shoed foot slammed into my stomach. I toppled over, the handcuffs clanging against the floor with an ugly metallic clatter.

“You poisonous bitch!” Leo stood over me, finger jabbing down, the veins in his neck bulging. “Claire was about to marry me! You give me my wife back!”

“I didn't poison her! Leo, you have to believe me!” I lay on the floor, shaking my head desperately, ignoring the churning in my gut.

“Still making excuses!”

Max stepped up from behind, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and wrenched my upper body off the ground. “Jane, fine, you sulk and snipe around the house — but how could you actually kill someone? At dinner yesterday, Mom gave Claire an extra bowl of soup, and you were in the kitchen slamming things around, saying why does she get all the good stuff. I thought you were just grumbling. I never knew your heart was this black!”

“I didn't! I was in my room folding cardboard boxes all yesterday — I never went near the kitchen!” My mouth was full of the taste of blood, and I looked in despair at the relatives filing in behind. “Auntie, you came by yesterday afternoon to borrow some sugar. You saw me in my room, didn't you?”

My aunt shrank back and covered her mouth, her eyes darting away. “I… I'm old, my eyes aren't good. All I saw was you standing there staring blankly, holding a pair of scissors. Gave me a fright…”

My uncle clasped his hands behind his back and gave a cold snort. “Never right in the head, even as a kid. Just like I always said — an ungrateful thing you can never feed enough.”

I lay on the cold tile, looking at these people — the same relatives I brought armfuls of gifts to every holiday.

The cops dragged me up off the floor, twisted my arms behind me, and hauled me toward the squad car outside. The handcuffs cut into the bone of my wrists, but I didn't struggle anymore, and I didn't cry out that I was innocent.

At the gate, I stopped and turned my head.

In the yard, the relatives were crowding around to comfort my parents. Leo had already turned away and was murmuring something to the deputy sheriff who'd taken the money, his shoulders shaking slightly, as if he were laughing.

Max brushed the dust off his pants and walked into the kitchen.

My mom and dad stood under the eaves of the main house and didn't spare me a single glance.

The white sheet over Claire's body lay alone in the middle of the living room.

They put me in the squad car. The door shut, and the car started, rolling a long way down the muddy dirt road. Not one of my heartbroken family members turned to look toward the car.

Because of the psychiatric diagnosis my dad had handed over, I wasn't sent to the county jail. Instead I was held for the time being in an abandoned holding room at the town police station.

The single room had only one rusted iron bed. Two rough canvas straps fixed my hands to the rails on either side.

I stared at the blackened ceiling, listening to the thunderstorm outside, my mind strangely clear.

I wasn't going to run. I just had to hold on until morning, when the medical examiner from the city would do the formal assessment and pull the traces from the kitchen — then I could prove I'd never touched the poison.

Two in the morning.

Someone cut the iron bars outside the room with bolt cutters. The old wooden window frame was forced open, and a figure climbed in with effort, dropping hard onto the concrete floor. Then a second one.

By the faint light spilling in from the hallway, I made out the two faces.

It was my mom and dad.

My mom's hair had come completely undone, and there was a gash split open on her forehead, dark red blood running down her brow and matting half her face.

One of my dad's legs dragged unnaturally along the ground, his clothes covered in muddy boot prints from being kicked.

My mom stumbled to the bedside and reached out with trembling hands to undo the straps.

“Jane, hurry, go,” she whispered, coughing bloody spit.

I froze. Looking at the hands reaching toward me, I instinctively pressed myself back hard against the wall, watching them warily.

The scene from that afternoon was still vivid — my dad yelling for the police to take me away, my mom slapping me across the face.

“What are you doing here?” My voice shook badly, thick with suspicion. “Weren't you both dying to have the cops haul me off this afternoon?”