impossible, what she was trying to do—everything was impossible, from trying to create a new life to trying to take Garner with her.
For a time, she considered staying with him. But they would only be separated in the end. By the girl, by the law, by fate—no matter how tenderly she nursed Garner back to health, not only from the ergot, but from the cancer too. No one cared about any of that.
She would have to leave him here.
As the knife-sharp pain in her bones began to wane, so did her paralysis. Cat found her knees and reached out to shove Garner’s board off her hand. The wooden thunk was a distant sound under the dull roaring of pain in her head. She couldn’t stay on the cold floor a second longer.
Without looking at Garner, without pausing to assess the damage to her hand, Cat stumbled out of the room and out of the office. The night sky in the windows had lightened almost imperceptibly from black to charcoal. To Cat the change was as loud as Cinderella’s midnight tolling, counting down the final seconds of an ending dream.
She stumbled upstairs to collect the valuables she would need for her next life.
32
The front room of Garner’s house, the room on the other side of the kitchen wall, was a showcase for glass jars filled with herbs and dried flowers, slender brown vials topped with medicine droppers, squatty blue tubs filled with botanical salves, larger bottles variously labeled as syrups or tonics, and several elegant teapots and cups.
Beth ran her fingers along the labels, curious about her grandfather’s work. Many of them bore the green Garner’s Garden logo. Others appeared to be from Europe. She saw some from China, with the contents handwritten in English on a sticker and applied over the Chinese characters. A whisper of rising red sun slipped through the lightweight curtains, likely drawn to protect the jars from direct light without darkening the room. A display case that also served as a counter bearing a register and credit card machine separated the products for sale from the shop’s front entry.
“He’s developed all these remedies?” she asked Trey, who was fishing a laptop out of his backpack.
“Not the stuff that requires a lab. He has a contract with one company to produce a few recipes, and he has his favorite distributors, but his specialty is the fresh plants—you should see the basement.”
“I thought he was in real estate.”
“Up here? This botanical interest of his makes more sense to me. He has cancer, you know.” Beth turned to face him, and his eyebrows shot up. “Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“What kind?”
“Liver.”
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Not bad enough to keep him off his feet. He doesn’t talk about it very much, except to swear by this stuff.” Trey indicated the remedies on the shelves. “And by the good doctor, who calls herself holistic.”
Trey dropped onto a sofa under one of the windows and opened his laptop on his knees. “So Dr. Cat told you Garner’s dead. And did I tell you she wrote me off as a specimen of perfect health? What kind of doctor resents a healthy person? Let’s look into her.”
Beth didn’t see how this might help them find Garner.
“Do we really have to wait here for him to come home?”
“When the sun’s up, we’ll go ask around. Garner’s popular here. But right now the town sleeps. And besides, I don’t mind being forced to hang out for a while with a pretty cowgirl who listens to my stories.” Trey didn’t seem to be teasing her, but a veil of oil covered her hair, and her jeans might be able to stand up by themselves. “How did you come by Cat and Nova?” he asked.
“Nova was sick. I found her on my way into town, up at that church.”
“The Burnt Rock Harbor Sweet Assembly. Silly place. But Nova has broad beliefs about her spiritual life. Is she okay?”
“She’s had a miscarriage.”
Trey looked up from his computer. “Garner said something about her expecting.”
“Nova told me Dr. Ransom poisoned her.”
Trey didn’t laugh.
“I saw Nova Saturday night,” Trey said. “She looked fine to me. She came by Cat’s after we finished eating dinner.”
“Does everyone here make a habit of eating with folks they don’t like?”
Trey’s fingers flew and the keyboard clacked.
“Don’t we all now and then? I think Garner was trying to patch up an argument between them. Cat was pretty nice about things, now that I think of it—she