and in all the drawers. She even looked outside, around the whole perimeter of the house. Finally she spotted the rug and again noted the bulge in the center of it.
She rolled out the rug, and with it something went tumbling. The force of the rolling threw whatever it was across the room. Hopeful, she took a step to retrieve it, and she saw the mouse. It was the same mouse that had scurried across the floor earlier, and with it was a tiny mouse, presumably its baby. Their eyes were wild. The mice were frozen in place. Zee realized that in rolling out the rug she had destroyed their home. Beside the baby mouse, as if in haute decor, was the silk flower the mice had gnawed from the old straw hat and the ball from her game of jacks that had rolled under the bed so long ago. Next to it was the book.
STRYCHNINE WAS THE POISON MAUREEN had researched for her story, the one she’d had the housekeeper use on the captain. It was also the poison Maureen ended up using on herself.
There were many easier poisons available, a few she had learned about from Ann and others as nearby as her garden. Maureen had considered and rejected them all. Strychnine is a poison that travels up the spinal cord and heightens the intensity of the convulsions it causes. It is a terrible way to die. Any emergency worker who has ever seen strychnine poisoning would be unlikely to forget it. The seizures are often brought on within ten minutes of ingestion and are triggered by stimulation of any kind-from fear of death to bright light to the sound of a distant car passing on the road. Theoretically, it is possible to survive strychnine poisoning, if one could keep the poisoning victim absolutely calm and quiet for twenty-four hours or so, until the poison clears out the system. But it almost never happens. A noise, or even the softest touch, will set off seizures that flex the back until the head and feet touch the floor, the body creating an almost perfect arch. After each seizure the victim will collapse in a heap, gathering the energy to seize again. After five or six seizures, the body’s energy is drained, and the victim dies of respiratory failure or exhaustion.
MAUREEN PLANNED HER DEATH CAREFULLY, if not well. Finch was on summer vacation from teaching and was carousing with his pirate friends, who were participating in a two-day encampment at Winter Island. And with Zee gone for several hours, Maureen had taken advantage of the opportunity.
The note she left behind was hidden in a place where only Finch would find it. At the bottom of the note, she finished with the verses that matched the book her daughter was just that moment bringing back to her.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild.
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Less than fifteen minutes after Maureen took the poison, Zee came home with the book. She slammed the screen door in the kitchen before she bounded up the stairs. It was the sound of the slamming door that sent Maureen into her first seizure.
20
WHEN ZEE WOKE UP, she was still on the couch. The sky had cleared, and the moon was rising over the harbor. It was huge and yellow, and she hadn’t seen one like it for a long time. As she sat up and got her bearings, she realized that it wasn’t the moonlight that had woken her but the sound of someone pounding on the door.
Finch was already in bed, and Jessina was gone for the night.
At first she thought it might be Hawk. He’d said he might come by tonight to do the railings. But when she looked at the clock, she saw that it was after eleven. Confused and still sleepy, she made her way to the door.
It was Michael.
“I got your message,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”
THOUGH THEY WERE BOTH EXHAUSTED, neither Michael nor Zee slept much that night. Zee’s childhood bed was an old-fashioned double, and it dipped in the middle like a hammock, which was fine for Zee alone but not great for two people. And Finch was sundowning again.
In the short time she’d been here, Zee had noticed that Finch seemed to become disoriented as the day slipped into evening, often leading him to get very agitated by normal activities like washing or dressing for bed. A normal occurrence in some patients with dementia, it was called “sundowning.” He often seemed fearful at such times, and he often wandered, which is what he’d been doing that first night he stood at Zee’s bed before the freezing episode began. Sundowning was something Zee knew about, but it was more common to Alzheimer’s patients than those with Parkinson’s.
When he was sundowning, Finch often didn’t want to take medication. It took her until 4:00 A.M. to convince him to take some trazodone, and by 7:00, when he was due to have his first dose of Sinemet, Finch was fast asleep.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said to her again after witnessing Finch’s deteriorating condition. “I thought you were just being dramatic.”
It was the same phrase that William had used to describe Lilly when he’d first brought her to see Mattei. It was an interesting choice of words, and one that Zee might have called Michael on if they both hadn’t been so tired. She bristled but decided it wasn’t worth an argument.
“I hate to say it, but I agree with the occupational therapist,” he said. “Finch definitely needs to be in a nursing home.”
“He would rather die than be in a nursing home.”
LATER THAT MORNING, CLEARLY FEELING guilty, Michael helped Zee clean out more papers. She was making a pile of Melville’s belongings, things she would get to him or things he could come sort through one day when Finch was out of the house.
They talked little as they worked.
At six o’clock they sent out for Chinese, and they ate it in the kitchen with Finch and Jessina, who was making jokes about the chopsticks, threatening to feed Finch with them instead of the fork she was using.
“Let him feed himself,” Zee reminded her. Everyone was quiet as they watched Finch try to manipulate the fork.
After dinner she opened a bottle of twenty-year-old port that Michael had given Finch for his sixty-fifth birthday.
“He still has this?” Michael was amazed.
“He still has most of them,” she said, showing him. “Melville opens one every so often, but Finch doesn’t drink anymore.”
“Man,” Michael said.
“I told you that a long time ago,” she said.
He looked at her as if her last statement couldn’t possibly be true. Then, trying to cover, he searched the cabinets until he found a proper glass for the port.
ZEE HAD TOLD MICHAEL MORE than once that Finch had stopped drinking, but Michael could never seem to remember it and continued giving him expensive bottles of alcohol on birthdays and holidays. There were other things he’d forgotten as well, things she was pretty sure she’d told him that he didn’t remember. She told herself his job was stressful. And the added stress of the wedding plans she hadn’t been making only made things worse.
It hadn’t always been like this. At least she didn’t think it had. In the beginning of their relationship, they’d talked about things. Or maybe it had been Michael who did most of the talking. He’d always been so clear about what he wanted. And the fact that he’d wanted her was flattering. Michael could have anyone. And though it angered her lately, Zee had originally liked his certainty. There was something attractive and almost seductive
