Chapter 5: Marry Me

"He's breathing," I said. "Barely. He needs a hospital in ten minutes."

Rowan Peverell turned his head to his driver.

"Peverell Private. Tell them it's a kidney crash and to have the dialysis room open."

"Already called, sir."

The ambulance reached the gate in four minutes.

I rode in the back with my needles still in Tobias's skin and my thumb on his pulse the whole way.

Rowan's chair followed behind us in a car.

The Penhallow house stayed dark until we were almost gone.

Then every light came on at once.

The hospital had a private floor where the walls were a pale wood and the nurses did not run.

They ran for Rowan.

By two in the morning Tobias was on a bed with a drip in each arm, asleep, with a color in his face that was nearly pink.

The nephrologist stood at the foot of the bed holding a chart and staring at me.

"Whoever placed those needles bought him another day," she said. "Maybe more."

"I need his pill box tested," I said. "And the capsule in it."

I laid the green case and the blue capsule on her desk.

"The dosing sheet is in the lid. The handwriting on it isn't mine."

She did not ask whose it was.

She called a technician and sealed the box in a bag.

I was signing the label when the corridor doors banged open.

Leland came first.

His right arm hung in a sling, stiff at the elbow, and his face was grey with fury.

Behind him came my father, my mother, and Delphine in a fresh dress, her eyes swollen.

"There she is," Leland said. "She poisoned him."

"Leland," my mother whispered.

"She's been home eight hours and he's in the hospital! She put something in his medicine! Where is the pill box?"

The nephrologist stepped in front of her desk.

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