At the wave of her father’s hand, Miriam led Oliver and Gwen back to the front door. Oliver wished he could run outside. Thoughts better kept in knocked at his lips, but when Oliver tried to take his hatfrom Miriam’s hand, she didn’t let go.
Holding his gaze, she blurted, “Alice made Annabelle sick or sicker.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but I caught Alice taking vials out of father’s medicine cupboard that weren’t prescribed to Annabelle. I tried to confront her, but she told me I didn’t know what I was talking about since I had no training. When I told my father, he didn’t believe me that they weren’t the medications he prescribed to Annabelle. He said Alice knew what she was doing. Alice had been our father’s assistant until she married. She knows what all the medications do and the harm they can cause, but so do I after so many years. Some of what she took wouldn’t have helped Annabelle’s condition, and our father never would have prescribed them.”
“Why didn’t you tell the sheriff?” Oliver whispered.
“Because I didn’t want my sister to go to jail. I wanted her to stop.”
“Miriam, make haste! I have an appointment with the Stills in half an hour, and I won’t be late,” the doctor called from the dining room.
Giving them a pleading look, Miriam glanced down the hall. “My father needs me. Please show yourselves out and not a word of this to my father.”
Turning on heel, Miriam marched back to the dining room and shut the pocket door behind her as if the conversation had never happened.
***
They had only gotten a handful of steps away from Dr. Miller’s house before Oliver could no longer contain himself. Rounding on Gwen, he blurted in a not-quite-whisper, “That man is a menace to society! Did you hear him? Did you hear the treatments he proposed? Mustard plasters? Foot baths? Hot blood. Ijust—”
Oliver pressed his knuckles into his eyes and bit back what felt like a scream of frustration. That man could kill someone. Hell, he probably had killed numerous people during his overly long career in Aldorhaven from inadequate or ill-informed treatments. Oliver knew he couldn’t expect everyone to stay up to date on everything, he certainly struggled to keep up with the literature, but Dr. Miller seemed stuck in the 1830s. No files. No autopsies. No desire to do better. No action taken to stop his daughter from poisoning her child. A stab of anger thirty-seven years old lanced through Oliver’s heart. Had this man been the reason his mother died after his birth? Could she have been saved if she had stayed in Philadelphia? Oliver shook the thought away. His mother had been dead for decades. There was no sense in ruminating on what-ifs when the health of the living was at stake.
Releasing a tense breath, Oliver added, “The worst part is that if the forest is turning new people away and keeping in those who live here, there’s no way for them to hire another doctor or seek better care. These people are stuck with him. What happens when he dies? Will they just be without a doctor, or will his even more unscrupulous daughter step up to take his place?”
“Unless you’re planning to volunteer as the next town doctor, Ol, I think we’ll have to let them deal with the consequences of their inaction.” When Oliver opened his eyes, he found Gwen cleaning her glasses with a frown. “At least he likes to hear himself talk. Even if it wasn’t the information you were hoping for, it was useful.”
“I guess.”
“Has Felipe…?” she asked, making a tugging motion.
“No, not yet.” Focusing on the other end of the tether, Oliver felt only undercurrents of concentration and frustration in equal measure. “His investigation feels like it’s going as well as ours is.”
“Well, let’s walk around until he’s ready. It’s probably good to get the lay of the land anyway.”
Oliver sighed but followed Gwen as she crunched through fallen leaves back toward the heart of town. He really didn’t want to meander around a strange place, and the looming grey clouds didn’t help. Hecouldn’t help but worry about getting lost or acting strange and drawing unwanted attention. Oliver centered himself; with her at his side and Felipe only a panicked tug away, he could manage. For a town built on magic, he hadn’t seen anyone use theirs. While the street of houses was nearly deserted, closer to the main road, there was a woman tugging two little children along from shop to shop, old men playing backgammon under a tree, and workers unloading dry goods from a wagon. Aldorhaven was far less crowded than Manhattan, but the lack of anonymity made Oliver’s brain urge him to go back to his room and not venture out for fear of drawing their eye. Even if it was possible to go back to the inn without straining the tether to its breaking point, it wasn’t fair to Gwen and Felipe. Pushing his feelings down, Oliver let his mind wander to dull the familiar wash of anxiety.
As they walked, Gwen greeted each curious gawker they passed while Oliver tipped his hat automatically, but his mind kept looking for some hint of recognition or resemblance in the faces of every stranger they passed. He knew he shouldn’t have been thinking about his father’s family when they were still working on the case; the dead took precedence over his whims, but he couldn’t help it. Strolling past weathered houses built in the colonial style and newer ones with gingerbread moldings and Mansford roofs, Oliver wondered which one his parents had lived in and what it would have been like to grow up in Aldorhaven instead of Philadelphia. It was strange to know that his mother had probably looked upon the same tavern with its flat, red brick face and the pharmacy with its brightly colored show globes in the window and hunter green sign above the door every day as she walked around Aldorhaven. The people who created him had been dead and gone for decades, yet their world remained relatively untouched.
“Let’s go in,” Gwen said, nodding toward the pharmacy across the road. “I need to get the taste of that tea out of my mouth. Hopefully, they have a soda fountain.”
“Drinks are on me if they do.”
The bell jangled overhead as they stepped inside Hughes & SonPharmacy. The walls were lined with dark wood shelves full of glass bottles and cannisters neatly labeled in efficient script. Oliver’s shoulders loosened as he eyed the orderly rows of chemicals and silently read off their names one by one. If the doctor lived sixty years in the past, the pharmacy at least gave Oliver some hope that the people of Aldorhaven would be well cared for. A young Black man in a white coat carefully measured out minute scoops of yellow powder onto a scale behind the long, L-shaped counter, and in the very back, catty-corner to the door was the soda fountain.
“I’ll be with you folks in a minute.” Satisfied with the reading, the pharmacist carefully decanted the powder into a vial, capped it, and set it aside. The man turned, revealing a prodigious mustache and an easy smile. A look of surprise flashed across his face as his gaze traveled from Gwen to Oliver. “How may I help you?”
“Two drinks, please. An orange phosphate for me and a ginger ale for the lady,” Oliver said softly as they took a seat at the back counter.
With a nod, the pharmacist turned to the soda fountain and the rows of syrup bottles. As he worked, Oliver’s gaze traveled to the diplomas and photographs hanging directly across from him behind the counter. One frame contained a diploma for a Mr. John Hughes Jr. from Howard University and the other was for a Mr. John Hughes from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Oliver smiled to himself. Not quite his alma mater but its sibling school. Pulling off his gloves and hat, Oliver watched Gwen relax for the first time since they left the inn. While he was glad their detour could provide some respite, he hated that Gwen knew what it felt like to present a façade ofnormalcyto the world that felt like an ill-fitting suit. It wasn’t fair that she, of all people, had to do so.
“The younger Mr. Stills said there were three more investigators from the Paranormal Society in town,” Mr. Hughes said as he set their drinks on the counter. “Are you and your missing companion here to investigate theincidents?”
Gwen raised a brow. “You must not get a lot of strangers in town if gossip travels this fast.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Actually, it’s a librarian, a medical examiner, and an investigator from the society, not three investigators, but close enough,” Gwen replied with a smile. “I’m Gwen Jones. This is Dr. Barlow, and our colleague, Inspector Galvan, is off with Mr. Allen.”
