not because he wanted to hightail it home and never come back.
We made the short walk home and got there just as Mom and Mo were hauling a small couch down the front steps. Its entire underside was shredded to pieces.
“I was hoping we’d left the rodents behind in Brooklyn,” Mo said. “Wishful thinking, right?”
Karter’s phone buzzed and he checked the screen. “I gotta go.” He jogged over and gave Mo a quick hug. “Thanks for breakfast. It was great.”
“Baby, you don’t have to lie to her,” Mom said. “She needs to hear the truth.”
“You know I can hear you, right?” Mo said. “I’m standing right here.”
Karter chuckled. “I’ll text you later, Briseis.” He hopped in his truck, gave a quick wave, and left.
“Bri, baby, you need to take my Taser if y’all are gonna be out in these woods,” Mom said as I followed her inside. “There are wild animals out there.”
“You want me to use the Taser on wild animals?” I started to laugh but realized she wasn’t joking. “Mom, how’s that supposed to work?”
Mo shook her head. “We’re not tasing wild animals. We should be trying to make friends with them. We’re in their territory now.”
Mom sucked her teeth. “Make friends with them? Who are you, the Black Snow White?”
“Just you wait,” said Mo. “By the end of the summer, I’m gonna have deer and baby bunnies eating carrots out my hand.”
Mom shook her head, then turned to me. “What were you and Karter up to out there? Getting that garden in shape?”
“It’s a mess, but we put a dent in it today.”
“You need help?” asked Mo. “Me and Mom could come out there and help.”
“Don’t volunteer me for that,” Mom said quickly. “You wanna go out there, be my guest. But keep me out of it. Love you. Bri, baby, you know I do, but I’m stayin’ put.”
“It’s okay. Karter can help, and I don’t mind being out there by myself. It’s kind of nice. Gives me a chance to”—I looked at Mo—“to stretch.”
Mo nodded and Mom seemed happy that she didn’t have to go outside. I’d shared more with Karter than I had with them, and I felt extremely guilty about that. They’d never done anything but be supportive of me in every possible way. But if Karter got upset or decided it was too much, he could walk away. I’d be crushed, but I’d find a way to get over it. My parents couldn’t walk away from me—they wouldn’t want to. It was better to try and make sure they never had to choose between loving me and being afraid.
Karter came over every day for the next week. I worried his mom would make him stick to his shifts at the bookshop but she covered for him most days. He helped me rig up a plastic tarp to collect dew for the poison plants, but I never brought him into the Poison Garden. He didn’t want to be back there, anyway. He coughed every time he got close to the moon gate even though there was nothing poisonous in the air around him.
We talked for hours about how things had been for me growing up, how Mom and Mo had reacted when they found out what I could do, what it was like living in Brooklyn, but when the conversation shifted to him, he was always hesitant. He didn’t talk about his dad at all, and his mom was a workaholic to the point of neglect. Karter always changed the subject when it got too heavy.
The plants in the Poison Garden grew with their infusions of rainwater and dew, but they took their time. They came alive under my thumb, but by the time I’d collected two full harvests from the front garden, only one was ready in the Venenum Hortus.
Karter worked in the front part of the garden while I collected the rosary peas and watered the hemlock root, castor beans, and oleander. Every time I did, I let the most toxic parts of the plants come in contact with my bare skin, just to test myself and see if Circe might have been wrong about me. I never developed so much as a rash or a welt, let alone seizures or bleeding mucus membranes—things that were supposed to happen when these poisons got in the bloodstream.
One afternoon, as we put away our rakes and hoses and as I hauled a bag of black hellebore to the gate, Karter paused. “Can I ask