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"No, I was hoping I could talk to you about your garden."
"My garden?" she repeated, cocking her head to the side. "Now why would you need to see my garden, Calliope?"
"Callie."
She rolled her eyes, annoyed that I had never liked the name she'd picked out for me.
"Callie, I won't be asking the same question again."
"I just … want to see your garden."
"To steal some flowers, perhaps?" she asked. "You could just ask for the deadly ones. No need to steal them."
"You're okay with me wanting them?" I asked her. "You don't know what it's for."
"I'm no fool, I still have spies, Callie. I know you left your husband and judging by the weathered bruise around your eye, I suspect he's been hurting you for a while. Why would I, as a responsible mother, care if you were to kill your husband?"
"Because that's a crime," I said. "You've grown poisonous plants all your life, and yet you never thought to do it to my father."
I followed my mother out the back door and into her garden. Her entire backyard was full of green lushness with assorted colours peeking through. It was as I remembered it when she had one at the old house.
"Do you love Judd?" she asked me.
"I did," I said. "That's why I married him."
"But do you still?" she replied.
"No, I don't. He's not the man I married."
"Then you never loved him," she told me. "You just wanted to escape, and he was the one you could do that with."
"How can you be so sure?" I asked her, genuinely curious.
"You asked me why I didn't poison your father when I had the means to," she stated, walking me through the path around your garden. "The answer is simple. I loved him. I still do to this day, but we can't be together. He's happy with his new wife, and I'm happy in my life. We love each other, but from afar. It's the only way we can do that."
"Because I want to kill Judd is why you think I don't love him?" I asked.
"No, because you so easily want to kill him. You're not using your father's men to do it, you want to do it. That's personal. I think you did love him, but he betrayed you. You're letting your anger do the thinking."
"I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for my daughter."
My mother turned around and I saw a glimmer of what I could tell was surprise.
"I thought you would have known since you have spies and all."
"Not on you," she said. "What's her name?"
"Christa."
"And she's the reason you're going to kill Judd?"
I nodded. "I have to. He'll take her away if I don't and he won't treat her right."
This changed the way my mother was looking at me. I could see real sadness.
"The choice you're making is a personal one. Poison isn't easy to pull off, you'll have to get really close to him. You do know that, right?"
I nodded. "Yes. But it'll also be slow. He'll know it's me before he dies."
