Page 49 of Potion Sickness

Tiffany hops down from the stage and walks up the center aisle with the whole company watching.

Everyone rushes to the lobby to watch through the windows. The automatic floodlight over the doors comes on. She turns once, twice, then three times, her arms out for balance. She spits into the hedge, says a word that carries through the doors and makes Hannah cover Emma’s ears a full second too late, and then knocks to be let back in.

Pru opens the door.

“Well, come in,” she says. “It’s chilly out, and you’re on cue at eight.”

“Let the record reflect,” Englebert says, “that that was the finest performance of her career. There wasn’t a false note in it.”

“It wasn’t a performance, Englebert.”

“Exactly, Marigold. That is precisely what I said.”

CHAPTER 15

Pru hands me her phone before she starts the car.

“Go through my voicemail,” she says. “All of it. If I have to carry this by myself I’m going to drive us into a tree.”

“What’s your passcode?”

“My birthday.”

There are twenty-six voicemails, all from Pru’s mom — my Aunt Genie — all of them from the last week. I go in order with the phone on speaker in my lap. Pru drives and supplies commentary.

Friday, four-eleven in the afternoon. “Prudence. The hedge is wrong.”

“Which hedge?” I ask.

“There are two hedges at Hemlock Hill. I’ve looked at both of them. They seem fine.”

Saturday, six-forty. “Don’t let them switch my pen.”

“I assure you nobody in that building wants her pen.”

Sunday, seven-oh-two in the morning. “Betty’s girl will tell the truth.”

I stop the playback with my thumb. “Who’s Betty?”

“Betty is Tiffany’s mom’s name. I didn’t think about it at the time.”

“Huh,” I say. “That’s days before Tiffany confessed.”

“When she’s right, she’s right,” Pru shrugs.

Sunday, eleven-fifty at night. Fourteen seconds of a television playing a golf match.

Monday, six a.m. “Have you eaten?”

Monday, six-oh-four. “You need to eat.”

Then Monday, two in the afternoon, nine seconds long. “Tell Marigold it’s green.”

“What’s green?”

“Who knows.”

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