you left, has diarrhea, a dry mouth, a rash, trouble breathing, and he fainted twice since dessert.”
Cillian buckled my dad inside his Aston Martin. “How would you diagnose that, Doc?”
“Well, I need to run more tests, of course, but at first glance I would say he was poisoned.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Hunter congratulated me. “When Da finished his cup of coffee, he proceeded to collapse on top of the table like a stack of cards.”
All the air left my lungs at once.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You just got back from the hospital,” Hunter pointed out.
My face filled with heat and shame, and I curled my long coat around myself to prevent my brothers from seeing the giant rip in my dress. They thought I was at Brigham, too. Because I lied to them. To all of them. Every single member of my family and the small circle of my friends.
“It’s no trouble.”
“Your funeral,” Cillian clipped. “Hunter, let her take the passenger seat. C’mon, Ash. We’re taking the car. We don’t want the headlines an ambulance would create.”
“Forever the Fitzpatricks.” Hunter touched his forehead with mock salute, tucking himself next to Da.
I stuffed myself into the seat next to Cillian.
“Sure you’re okay leaving your baby behind?” Hunt asked from the backseat, jerking his chin toward the manor. He meant our mother.
“Don’t start.”
“No shade.” Hunter raised his palms in the air defensively. “All I’m saying is she is probably writing all of us out of her will because we are driving Da to the hospital instead of telling her how pretty she is—after she poisoned him.”
Hunter only knew the half of it. Jane Fitzpatrick’s problems were much worse than being self-centered and prone to drastic mood swings.
Athair was unresponsive the whole way to the ER. As soon as we walked in, I found out who was the doctor assigned to deal with Da, took him aside, and explained I was a fellow doctor, relaying the evening to give him the full picture, omitting the poisoning part to prevent it from leaking to the media.
The three of us siblings spent the night sleeping by Da’s bedside, huddled together like when we were kids. The blood and urine test results came back the following morning.
It looked like my father had taken an enormous amount of warfarin, a blood thinner and also an active ingredient in many rat poisons. A drug that can easily cause death if taken in a certain quantity.
My father had been poisoned by a pro who knew what they were doing.
Not enough to kill, but definitely enough to deliver a message.
The weird thing was no one at the table had any motive to kill Da.
No one other than Mother.
“It’s not Mother.” I shook my head, standing in Cillian’s home office later that day, looking out the window as more snow fell and covered the rose garden and trimmed bushes, painting everything white. “It’s not.”
“Oh, come on, Ash. At the very least, it’s an option worth considering. They’ve been at each other’s throats for as long as I can remember.” Hunter massaged my shoulders from behind, still in his suit from the previous night.
We’d come here straight from the hospital, as soon as my father’s secretary took over and arrived there.
I whipped around, slapping his hand away. “No, Hunt. She is incapable of hurting a fly.”
That was not completely true. The only person Mother was capable of hurting was herself, and she did it often, but I didn’t want Hunter and Cillian to know about that side of her. They had enough on their plate, running Royal Pipelines and taking care of their families. Their wives were my best friends, and I didn’t want to hog my brothers’ attention by dragging them into the issues we were having at Avebury Court Manor.
“She is also the only person at the table with a hard-on to see Gerald return his equipment to the Almighty,” Cillian pointed out, taking a seat in his plush leather chair and lighting up a cigar, his legs propped up on his desk with his ankles crossed.
Something about my older brother rejected vulnerability, so I learned how to become robotically efficient in front of him from a young age. I didn’t allow myself to show too much emotion. Not for the first time, I found myself envying Persy and Astor. The way he looked at them so adoringly, like he was still hungry for something he already had.
I wondered if I would ever experience what my friends had. The kind of love