“Take me to her,” she demanded, opening the front door. When Simon didn’t move, she called into the night. “Greta!”
“She’s not coming,” he slurred.
“I swear, if you hurt her...”
“What’re you gonna do now, Izzy?” Another swig. “You already done enough.”
When he stepped outside, she followed him through the trees. The branches unfolded onto a moonlit lake, one edge hemmed by a garden of glowing blossoms like the flowers in Olivia’s book. The place where Jude drank the poisoned wine.
Her cut from the typewriter stung as she called Greta’s name. Was the moonflower powder toxic to touch? The only danger, she hoped, was by drinking it.
Simon’s pace had slowed, but he didn’t fall. Instead he pointed toward the water’s edge. To a pile of Greta’s colorful blocks. “She was right here.”
“Greta!” she called again, but silence swallowed her plea. Izzy shovedhim, fury exploding inside her. How she hated this man. “Did you drown her?”
He grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. “Time for you to take a swim, too.”
Her sweet girl, alone with this monster. Why hadn’t Izzy woken up when Simon first found them? And why didn’t Greta scream?
She wrestled against him. “I can’t swim,” she said, but he already knew that.
He pushed her toward a wooden boat, beyond the rim of moonflowers. “You and Greta get to be together.”
That’s not how the story unfolded in Olivia’s manuscript. Jude was in the boat, comatose, not Laurel. But if the seeds didn’t work, if Simon took her life, she prayed Olivia would find the baby before he did.
“I’m not getting in,” she spat, digging her heels into the muddy shore.
His grip loosened on her arm, but he still pushed her forward into the water. Only a little longer, she told herself as she struggled against him. A few more seconds before the poison took hold.
He stumbled again. “What’s wrong with your head, Izzy?”
“Nothing’s wrong with my head.”
“It looks—” A garble of words. “You look funny.”
“Moonflowers,” she said as the poison strengthened its grip.
He wobbled. “Blast them.”
“They see everything, Simon.”
“You look funny, and I—I feel funny,” he said as if she might have compassion on him. “What’s that?”
She scanned the lake. “You’re seeing things.”
“Stop lying to me, ’Livia.”
“I’m not Olivia.” But perhaps, in his mind, the women were the same.
“So thirsty.” He released her and knelt by the water, gulping handfuls before looking up again. “What’d you do?”
“I loved you with all my heart, that’s what I did, and you crushed it into pieces.”
Then she kicked his backside, and he tumbled into the lake.
A beam of light bounced down the path behind her, and Izzy leapt back into the tall grass.
“Simon!” a man yelled.
