The Poison Garden

by A. J. Banner

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “My brain is muddled. Everything is . . . fuzzy.” Past moments came back to me, but now I saw them from a different angle, suffused with new meaning. Brandon telling me only he understood me, that nobody else could. Bringing over items I’d left behind when I’d moved out, helping me rearrange my apartment. Showing up at the pharmacy, running into me by accident. Coming back to the island again and again. I’d been blind to his obsession—for who would be obsessed with me? Insane as it sounded, I had the answer before me. And now the obsession had become a dangerous fixation. He might be capable of anything. Perhaps, as long as I hadn’t been dating anyone new, he’d remained at a distance, biding his time, running into me now and then, exercising his patience. But now I was married and pregnant.

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend waiting for you in the harbor?” I asked, forcing a smile. “You don’t have to stay here with me.”

  “No girlfriend,” he said. “How can you even say that?”

  “But I thought—”

  “I needed to tell you something that you would believe. You should’ve left it alone. You should’ve let the story be true.”

  He flexed his shoulders, walked around looking at the displays in the shop, picking up soaps and sniffing them. He looked so big, muscular, strong enough to lift Kieran’s body, to pretend he was hoisting a duffel bag packed with gear. The thought made me shiver.

  “You’re not dating anyone?” I said shakily. “Not even the woman on the dock?”

  “There wasn’t a woman there. You know why I went down there.”

  “Right,” I said. Breathe in, out.

  “I haven’t dated anyone seriously since our divorce.”

  “That’s not normal,” I said.

  “We could’ve worked things out. We loved each other. We still do. You know what I learned growing up? Never give up hope. No matter what, I made a vow to take care of you, to protect you. A piece of paper, a divorce decree. It means nothing when the person you love is in danger. When her baby is in danger. Even if you’re not the father.”

  “That doesn’t matter to you?” I said, a sour taste in my mouth. “That you’re not the father?”

  “We all make mistakes. You make most of your mistakes in your sleep. Always in your sleep.” He laughed and rubbed his beard, the way he did when he didn’t quite believe something.

  I ran my hand across the metal tray on the old weigh scale. “I must’ve measured the Juliet plant here and made the formula. That must’ve been what happened,” I said, and looked up at him. “Nobody will ever know. And you’re sure nobody saw you push the dinghy away from the yacht?”

  “Not that I know of,” Brandon said. He seemed to be settling into this imagined collusion between us. “It’s the farthest slip. It was dark. All I had to do was tap the dinghy with my foot, like I said.”

  “As long as you’re sure.” How long could I keep this up?

  “Come here,” Brandon said, holding out his arms.

  I mustered my energy to go over to him, to let him enclose me in a hug. I forced myself to linger there. He needed to believe I was on his side. “It’s okay,” I said. “What you did.”

  He pulled back, looking pleasantly surprised, and relief crossed his features. “You really seemed like . . . you thought I did something wrong.”

  “I did think that, but I changed my mind.” I couldn’t go too far, showering him with love and praise. He wouldn’t believe it. It was all I could do not to shove him away.

  “He did hit you, didn’t he?” Brandon touched the healing wound on my temple.

  “No, I fell and hit the—”

  “The bastard. I knew what he was up to. When he took that woman into your house, your mother’s house.”

  “You saw him?” I tried to hide my shock. “I mean—what, you were watching out for me while I was gone?” Had he been hiding in the woods, watching through binoculars?

  “I didn’t know you were gone, not at first. I thought I always knew where you were, but I missed seeing you board the ferry.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know where I was all the time,” I said, the hair standing on my arms. “You have to work, don’t you?”

  “True, but I’m good at keeping general tabs on you. I check in to make sure the bastard doesn’t do something to hurt you.”

  “Why would he do that?” I felt as though I were walking on a tightrope high above a concrete sidewalk. I could fall at any moment.

  “Hey, he was messing around with another woman. The car he drives. A show-off car, an old Jaguar. Those things break down all the time. He primps in the mirror, in that bathroom downstairs. You can see in through the back windows—he never shuts the door. The guy is into himself, and he’s into money.”

  The heat rose in my cheeks. Brandon had spied on us. Had I walked around naked or partially clothed, left the bathroom door open? I couldn’t remember.

  “You were looking through our windows,” I said, balancing my voice on the tightrope.

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I’m no voyeur. But I love you. I watch out for you. I always have. I’m happy to see you still wear the pajamas I gave you—those flannel ones with the little flowers on them.”

  “They’re daisies,” I said, a creepy-crawly sensation on my skin. Had he watched me getting dressed? From where? How much had he seen?

  “Whatever.”

  The frightening idea occurred to me that he could’ve broken in, could’ve lurked in the shadows. “Did you actually come into the house?”

  He laughed. “What do you think I am? I kept an eye on you from a distance is all. I don’t intrude.”

  “Watching people isn’t intruding?” Brandon had become a psychotic voyeur. Who knew what he was capable of doing?

  “I worried the guy would do something to hurt you. And he did.” He had been watching the house. But how had I missed his truck? It could not have been at Chantal’s place the whole time. He must’ve parked farther away, I thought. Then he’d scuttled through the woods. He could’ve been watching from any vantage point, but he would only have been able to see in through the downstairs windows.

  “So you really just got here in time to find him in the garden,” I said.

  “Yeah, well—I did clean up the coffee mugs for you.”

  He had definitely been inside the house. “Did you ever go into Kieran’s farmhouse?” I asked. “I mean, did you keep an eye on him there, too?”

  “The guy needed watching. He took the redhead there, but only after . . .”

  “After what?” After I kicked Kieran out in his briefs, I thought. Had Brandon been watching me then as well?

  He sniffed, wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something foul. “Chantal told me you two fought. So naturally I had to check things out. Yeah, the redhead went to his farmhouse—but she left that night. They had some kind of big fight.”

  Brandon had been staking out Kieran’s farmhouse, had likely hung around there for hours. “What did they fight about?”

  Brandon shrugged. “Guys like that, they can’t be loyal. He was done with her, looked like. She was pleading with him. But he sent her on her way.”

  Done with her. Had Kieran been telling the truth? Had he broken things off with Diane? But I still couldn’t be sure about the words in my mother’s journal, the evidence on Kieran’s computer about the clinical trial. Unless he had a good explanation. I hadn’t even asked him.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “He left—took off in that old clunker Jaguar.”

  “And then . . . did you go into his house?” I said. “I mean, I would’ve, if I’d been there. To see what he was up to. With her.”

  “Oh yeah, her.” Brandon sneered. “But no, I didn’t go into his house. I’m not a fucking criminal. I followed him into town. He picked up Chinese food and went home.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Lights out. I went to my rental—you should see it, Elise. Nice little
place across town. View of the strait. But I’m only there until this job is done. Then I’m heading back to Seattle, unless . . .”

  Unless. My breath strangled in my throat. Did he expect me to welcome him with open arms? Kieran had slept alone at the farmhouse, when he could have been with Diane. And now I’d killed him—or possibly, Brandon had killed him—and his body floated at sea. “Let’s have some tea and calm down,” I said. “Oh, but you don’t drink tea. A beer?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I could use a beer.”

  I smiled, and to reinforce my charade, I kissed him gently on the cheek. “I’ll get you one. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I’ll be right here.” He sat on a stool at the counter in the shop, drumming his fingers on the wood surface. He seemed almost manic.

  I tried not to hurry as I returned to the house. The sky darkened toward evening. I considered making a break for it, glanced over my shoulder. He was watching through the windows. Just a turn to the left, and I could run. But he could run faster. The moment he lost sight of me, he would burst out and grab me.

  So I went into the kitchen, the clock ticking loudly. The smell of coffee in the air. I brought the beer from the fridge, the can cold against my fingers. I opened the can, reached up into the cabinet, pulled out a glass. Poured his beer. Reached behind the bags of tea in the cabinet, retrieved the Slumber powder. My heart crashed against my ribs. I poured the beer into a glass, closed the cabinet, scooped Slumber powder into his beer, and stirred. Tasted it. Slightly bitter, but not much different from its regular taste. The grains of powder floated like specks suspended in amber, not fully dissolved. He’ll figure it out, I thought in a panic. He won’t drink the beer.

  He’d never hurt me, in all the years we’d been married, but I’d sensed the potential in him, an obsessive force, like a bulldozer that couldn’t stop rolling ahead. I could picture him crushing the beer can, his eyes bright and crazed. He would swing his fist at my head, and I would be gone. I set the glass of beer on the countertop, the frothy surface fizzing.

  The cottage door squeaked open, and he stepped out beneath the porch bulb, a frowning hulk. I was taking too long. I stirred the powder, the spoon clinking against the glass. I’d spilled a dusting on the counter. He closed the cottage door, sauntered down the path. The bag of Slumber powder still sat on the countertop. I returned the bag to the cabinet, stood on tiptoes to push it behind a box of tea bags. Then I wiped the counter, smears of Slumber powder clinging to the kitchen sponge.

  He stopped in the garden, looking around at the trees, then down at the spot where Kieran had died. Died. He is dead. I had to repeat the word in my mind to believe it—but it still seemed surreal. I’d wanted him gone, but I would never have . . . But I could have. Brandon was obsessed, a stalker, but he had not admitted to murdering Kieran. He still shifted the blame to me—either because it was true, and I’d killed my husband in my sleep, or because he wanted to make me feel guilty, to keep me under his thumb.

  I opened the dishwasher, dropped the spoon into the cutlery receptacle. He resumed his pace. He was almost to the back porch. I picked up the can of beer and glass just as he flung open the door, dark suspicion marring his features.

  The smile—how did I do it? Stretch my lips and pretend to be happy to see him? Somehow, it worked. His facial muscles relaxed, his gaze shifting to the glass of beer. “Thought you might skip out on me again,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door after him.

  “Why would I do that?” I poured the rest of the beer into the glass, the fluid fizzing again. Oh no, this wasn’t supposed to happen, I thought. A strange reaction brewed between the powder and the beer—I almost expected the drink to explode. But I played it cool, tossed the can into the recycling bin. Then I gave him the glass, his fingers brushing mine as he took it from me and peered inside.

  “What kind of beer is this?” he said, his lips turning down.

  Shit, shit, I thought.

  He retrieved the can from the recycling bin, read the label. “Hmm,” he said.

  “You like that one, don’t you?” I said. A smear of Slumber powder clung to the edge of the countertop, a spot I’d missed. If he looked in that direction—but he didn’t.

  He sipped, swirled the beer in his mouth. My pulse in a frantic race, I slipped past him, flinging open the door. Headed outside, back to the cottage. On this stretch of the garden, on the ceramic pavers, I thought again of taking off, but he hadn’t ingested enough of the Slumber powder to have any effect. It would take much more than a sip.

  He followed me, catching up and taking my hand. The touch of his fingers startled me, as if I’d accidentally swiped my hand through a spiderweb. I didn’t dare pull away—he seemed on edge, as if any rejection could set him off.

  As we went inside the cottage again, and he casually let go of my hand, my mind hurtled back to a day, not long after I’d left him, when I’d made a terrible mistake. My mother had begun to suffer from headaches, months before her definite diagnosis. I had met Kieran but had not begun dating him. Brandon and I had not been apart long—we’d still been connected by an invisible thread, the marriage still fresh in our memories as we headed down different roads. In a moment of vulnerability, I’d fallen into bed with him again. At the house in which we had lived together, the same Craftsman-style bungalow—so comforting and familiar. He’d proudly shown me his upgrades—a new floor in the master bedroom, a picture window in the family room, a privacy hedge in the backyard. The improvements had worked their magic on me, we’d found ourselves kissing, and then . . . I’d even slept well afterward. His company made me feel less alone, no matter how fraught our marriage had been.

  But in the stark light of morning, I’d realized my mistake. He’d commented on my choice of clothing—the sweater too clingy, the pants too tight, although they weren’t—and he demanded to know what time I would be “home,” as if our brief interlude had recemented our relationship.

  I’d raced out of the house, making an excuse, and I had avoided him, not returning his calls for weeks. He hadn’t given up. Brandon had always held on to things—assumptions, memories, hope. Me. But now—now he had truly lost his mind. I wondered if anything he had told me on this day was true, anything at all.

  In the cottage, I realized I’d forgotten about the plug-in kettle. The water had been boiling for a while. I unplugged the kettle and poured hot water into the ceramic teapot. “Sure you don’t want a cup?” I said, the casual tone of my voice belonging to someone else, to a woman far more confident than me.

  “I’m good with beer.” He held up the glass, still half-full. Also half-empty, I reminded myself. Think on the bright side. But had I given him enough? He was looking out the window. “Your mom wanted me to work on this place to prepare it for us.”

  “You mean, for when you were going to move in again,” I said, letting the tea leaves steep in the infusion ball.

  “Yeah, I did the new floor in the bedroom, painted the upstairs.”

  “Did my mother say it was for us?”

  “Oh, she knew,” he said. “She kept talking about how we could work things out, you and me. We were meant for each other.”

  “She said that?” I said, doubtful. The lies flew from him with such ease.

  “I knew it would take a while for you to wrap your mind around the idea,” he said, touching a finger to his forehead. “But it was always in your thoughts.”

  “It’s not that difficult to imagine,” I said carefully. “We were together before.”

  “And after,” he reminded me.

  I flinched, hoping he didn’t notice my discomfort. I poured a weak mug of tea, pressed the palm of my hand to the bottom. He can’t really be saying these things, I thought. He can’t really believe, after all this time . . .

  He lifted the glass to his lips again, frowned, as if the beer suddenly tasted strange to him. Keep drinking, I thought. Come on.

  I sipped my tea. This was a long shot, my hope that the powder w
ould knock him out. I didn’t know the correct dosage, at least not consciously, not without checking the journal. I hoped it wouldn’t kill him. I needed a plan B, and fast, if the powder didn’t work at all.

  I wondered how he expected us to go on like this. If he really thought I still loved him, that we were meant to be together, why did he stick so close to me? Why did he try so hard to make sure I didn’t make a break for it? And where did he expect me to go?

  I’d thought of the island as home, a place to which I would return to heal, to mourn, to start again. But now the island was a prison, the sea’s currents its insurmountable walls. Kieran drifted away out there, and I didn’t know how much of my suspicions about him had been true. What if my mother, in her normal state of mind, would not have truly feared him at all? Regardless of the deeper truth of his character, he had cheated on me. And yet the danger I had perceived from Kieran paled in comparison to the dread I felt in Brandon’s presence. Unpredictable, unhinged, obsessed Brandon.

  I kept sipping my tea, pretending everything was all right. That I wanted to be here with him, that I understood perfectly well why he’d moved Kieran’s body. The craziness of the situation, that he had made me complicit in a murder—or that he perceived that we were colluding—seemed to escape him. He remained casual and relaxed, chugging his beer as if this were normal. At least he was chugging now, had almost downed the whole glass. But I wanted to scream, to throw everything at him: The vintage bottles on the display shelves. The tincture vials. Soaps. Anything I could get my hands on.

  “Weird aftertaste,” he said suddenly. “It’s got a kick.”

  “I could get you a different one,” I said.

  “Nah, it’s good.” He lifted his near-empty glass. “Here’s to the future.”

  “To the future.” I clinked my mug against his glass, fought to hold in my grief and rage. I wished I could apologize to Kieran for racing ahead of myself, for suspecting him of far too much.

  Brandon downed the last of the beer. How long would the powder take to work? He still seemed alert, hadn’t even yawned. Maybe I had not mixed enough in his beer. Or maybe alcohol neutralized the powder’s sedative effects.