The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,90

her eyes.

The new apartment had come with a large television already installed in the den. Sam had often found herself drawn to the dark room, one of those windowless boxes that builders called bonus spaces because they could not legally call them bedrooms.

Sam sat down on the couch. She placed an empty wine glass on the coffee table. Beside this, she put a bottle of 2011 Tenuta Poggio San Nicolò.

Anton’s favorite wine.

Fosco jumped into her lap. Sam absently scratched between his ears. She studied the elegant label on the wine bottle, the delicate scrollwork around the border, the simple red wax seal at the center.

The liquid inside might as well be poison.

Sam believed that it was wines like the San Nicolò that had killed her husband.

As Anton’s consultancy business had expanded, as Sam’s practice had grown, they were able to afford better things. Five-star hotels. First-class flights. Suites. Private tours. Fine dining. One of Anton’s lifelong passions was wine. He loved enjoying a glass at lunch, another glass, perhaps two, with dinner. The dry reds were his particular favorite. Occasionally, when Sam wasn’t around, he would accompany the drink with a cigar.

Anton’s doctors pointed to fate and perhaps the cigars, but Sam thought the high levels of tannin in the wines had killed him.

Esophageal cancer.

Less than two percent of all cancers were of this kind.

Tannin, a naturally occurring astringent, lends certain plants a defense against insects and predators. The chemical compound can be found in many fruits, berries and legumes. There are several real-world applications for tannoids. Vegetable and synthetic tannins are employed in leather-making. The pharmaceutical world frequently uses tannate salts in the production of antihistamines and antitussive medications.

In red wine, tannin acts as a structural component, a reaction from the skin of the grape making contact with the pips. Wines with higher levels of tannins age better than ones with lower levels, thus the more mature, the more expensive, the bottle, the higher the concentration of tannins.

Tannin also occurs naturally in tea, but the coagulating power can be neutralized by the proteins found in milk.

To Sam’s thinking, proteins and tannins were at the crux of Anton’s illness; particularly histatins, which are salivary proteins secreted by glands in the back of the tongue. The fluid contains antimicrobial and antifungal properties, but also plays a key role in wound closure.

This last function is perhaps the most vital. Cancer, after all, is the result of abnormal cell growth. If histatins don’t protect and repair the tissues lining the esophagus, then the DNA of the cells can become altered, and abnormal growth can begin.

Tannins are known to suppress the production of histatins in the mouth.

Every toast Anton made, every salut, had contributed to the malignancy growing inside the tissues lining his esophagus, spreading to his lymph nodes and finally into his organs.

At least that was Sam’s theory. As she had watched her beautiful, vibrant husband wither away over the course of two long years, she had clung to what appeared to be a tangible explanation—an x that had caused y. Anton had tested negative for oral HPV, a viral infection linked to roughly seventy percent of cancers of the head and neck. He was only an occasional smoker. He was not an alcoholic. There was no history of cancer in his immediate family.

Ergo, tannins.

To accept that fate had played any role in his sickness, that lightning had struck Sam not twice but three times, was beyond her intellectual and emotional capacity.

Fosco pressed his head into Sam’s arm. He had been Anton’s cat. There was likely some sort of Pavlovian reaction to the scent of the wine.

Sam gently set him aside as she moved to the edge of the couch. She poured a glass of wine that she would not drink for her husband that she could not see.

Then, she did what she had been avoiding since three this afternoon.

She turned on the television.

The woman who Sam would always think of as Miss Heller was standing outside the front entrance to the Dickerson County Hospital. Understandably, she looked devastated. Her long blondish gray hair was untamed, tendrils blowing wild in the wind. Her eyes were bloodshot. The thin line of her lips was almost the same color as her skin.

She said, “The tragedy of today cannot be erased by the death of another young woman.” She stopped. Her lips pressed together. Sam heard cameras clicking, reporters clearing their throats. Mrs. Pinkman’s voice remained strong. “I pray for the Alexander family. I pray for