She Tried to Poison Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Boathouse

The detective says Nolan already filed a report, Emme can't go home, and Seth takes her in until a courier delivers papers to put her affairs in her husband's hands.

The detective arrived at midnight, a tired woman in a rain jacket who sat on the edge of the bed and listened without writing anything for the first ten minutes.

Then she wrote everything.

Nolan and Fern had been asked to wait in the corridor.

Kit had gone with them.

Through the glass I could see the three of them standing close together, and Kit's head resting on Nolan's shoulder.

"Mrs. Kessling," the detective said when I was done. "I have to tell you something, and I'd like you to hear it from me."

"Tallant," I said. "I never changed it at work."

"Ms. Tallant. Your husband called us at nine forty tonight."

"Nine forty? I walked out at nine."

"He filed a report that his wife was in a mental health crisis, had made accusations against a friend of the family, and had a history of access to controlled substances at work."

My mouth went dry.

"He said you might have contaminated the glass yourself."

"I'm the one who sealed it."

"I know." She tapped her pen. "That's why I'm taking your statement first, and not his."

She also told me the clip had been posted.

Fern had filmed the whole toast and sent it to a lake community group before I even reached the hospital.

It was captioned, Please pray for Emme.

It had four thousand views already.

In the video, I was the woman who screamed at her best friend and poured a drink into a bottle.

The part where Nolan wouldn't take the glass had been cut.

"Is there somewhere safe you can stay tonight?" the detective asked.

"My house."

Seth coughed.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said.

"It's my house."

"Is it?"

The detective's phone buzzed, and she read a message and looked at me.

"The deputy at your address says the locks were changed this evening," she said. "Your husband told him you weren't to be let in until a doctor had seen you."

I laughed.

It wasn't a good laugh.

A doctor had seen me, and he had found poison in my blood.

I was discharged at two in the morning with a binder of instructions about Prussian blue, which would bind the thallium in my gut, and a first dose in a paper cup.

The ER doctor stood with me by the exit and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Don't eat or drink anything you didn't open yourself," he said. "Not from anyone."

Seth held the truck door.

I stood looking at it.

"Where are you taking me?"

"My place."

"Your place is a hundred yards from your mother's boathouse. She'd see us."

"It's across the lake," he said. "It's not a hundred yards from anything."

His home was an old boat shed on the north shore, with a stove, a loft, and a long workbench covered in cedar shavings.

An enormous grey dog got up from a dog bed and walked over to inspect me.

"That's Bishop," Seth said. "Don't take it personally. He doesn't like anybody."

Bishop leaned his whole weight against my leg and sighed.

"He likes me," I said.

"He's never done that before."

Seth went to the stove and put a kettle on.

Then he stopped, looked at the kettle, and put it back.

"I'll open a sealed water bottle for you," he said. "I'm sorry. I don't know what you can drink."

"I'm furious with you."

He turned around slowly.

"Okay."

"Eleven months," I said. "I could have been in a hospital in the spring. I could have kept my hair."

"Yes."

"You sent one letter. One. Who sends one letter?"

"A man who didn't think you'd believe him." He said it flatly. "You'd have told Nolan the second I knocked on your door, Emme. I knew it, and I'd have had nothing to show you. A man with a camera in a tree, accusing your best friend. You'd have called the sheriff on me."

"Maybe."

"Not maybe."

I opened my mouth to argue and found that I couldn't.

He was right, and I hated it.

"You still should have tried harder," I said.

"I should have."

"You don't get to just agree with me."

"What do you want me to do?" He almost smiled. "I can disagree if you'd like. I'm not good at it. I've had nine years to practice being wrong."

I sat down on the edge of his bed, because it was the only seat that wasn't covered in tools.

My hands were shaking.

Bishop climbed up next to me and put his big head in my lap.

"Why did they throw you out?" I asked.

Seth looked at the window, at the dark lake.

"My father died," he said. "I was in the house. They decided it was my fault."

He didn't say anything else, and I didn't push.

At dawn a car came down the gravel road, and a young man in a courier jacket knocked at the boathouse door.

"Emme Tallant?" he asked. "Sign here, please."

It was a thick envelope with a law firm's name embossed in the corner.

Inside was a petition addressed to the county court.

My husband was asking a judge to hand him control of all my property, my money, and my medical decisions, on the grounds that I was unfit to manage them.

The first item on the list was Harlow Point.

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