A Fierce and Subtle Poison (6 page)

Part Two

Isabel

Eight

THE POLICE SAID
it was a drowning. Marisol had been in the water for at least twenty-four hours and had washed up after the rainstorm. That’s why she had so many small cuts all over her skin. They were nips from curious fishes and scratches from bumping up against hunks of wood and flotsam as she was tossed around by the chop.

I was taken to the station and ushered into a room with concrete walls. I was questioned, given a cup of weak coffee to lessen the shock, made to wait, questioned again by a second person, then by a third. After another cup of coffee and another delay, Mara Lopez entered the room. By then I was half delirious. The caffeine on an empty stomach had given me the shakes. I told La Lopez I wanted to go home. She put her hand on my knee, gave it a
there, there
kind of pat. She told me she just wanted to make sure she had the details right: why I was alone on a beach at four in the morning, in what capacity I knew Marisol, those types of things. I answered honestly; I had nothing to hide.

She also said she’d called my dad out in Rincón and explained the situation to him. He told her to relay a message:
We’ll talk when I get back
.

“His son tripping over a dead Puerto Rican girl in the middle of the night apparently isn’t enough to pull him away from his business,” she added.

It was mid-morning when I was finally allowed leave. I went to Ruben’s house, where I found Marisol’s mother sitting on the couch in the hothouse living room—all the doors and shutters were closed as a sign of mourning. The air inside was thick with the smell of smoke and incense. I handed her some lilies I’d bought from the market and offered my condolences. It didn’t really matter what I gave her or what I said, though. The woman didn’t hear a word. Her gaze was locked on the tiny flame of a pillar candle that sat on the coffee table. Her fingers skillfully worked the pink plastic beads of a cheap rosary.

Ruben was self-exiled behind his locked bedroom door upstairs, so for close to four hours, I sat on the couch wedged between Marisol’s mom and Marisol’s ancient, mute grandmother.
I stayed there, sweating, through the duration of many candles, listening to the hiss of the paper fan Ruben’s abuela used to keep the mosquitoes at bay and to the clacks of her dentures shifting in her mouth as her lips moved in silent prayer.

All that time did not pass slowly, though. My thoughts ran on a loop: Marisol alive, laughing and determined to jump into the courtyard of the house at the end of Calle Sol; Marisol dead, her twisted limbs coated in wet sand and wrapped in seaweed; Marisol alive, moaning softly as my fingers traced her skin; Marisol dead, her mouth gaped open and her tongue, doubled in size and black.

I finally got up for a drink of water, and there in the kitchen was Celia, standing on a step stool at the counter. She was glaring at a half-cut-up pineapple and sucking on the pointer finger of her left hand. A ten-inch chef’s knife sat atop a cutting board. Both it and the pineapple were spotted with blood.

I bolted toward her, but she quickly pulled her finger from her mouth and held it up. The cut wasn’t bleeding anymore and not at all deep, just a shallow groove across her skin.

“It slipped.” Celia sniffled and then wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her green pajama top. “I’m sorry. I was hungry.”

“You shouldn’t have done this yourself,” I said. “You could’ve been hurt.”

I grabbed the knife, rinsed it with hot water, and tried to salvage some of the fruit.

“The police told us Mari drowned,” Celia blurted out, “but I don’t understand, because she knows how to swim. She was the one who was trying to teach
me
.”

The knife clanged loudly as I slammed it against the counter.

Celia was next to me, still up on her step stool, and when I turned to face her, I was reminded how much she resembled her sister: heart-shaped face, brown eyes that seemed to take in the smallest of details, hair the color of coffee. It was impossible not to picture that hair in wet knots or her cheeks covered in tiny marks left by teething fish.

I was at a loss. I didn’t know how to break this to a little girl: sometimes unfair and illogical things happen, and those things have the ability to convince you fairness and logic are illusions, as real as wishes blown off dandelions.

That’s when I remembered I had something real and concrete I could give her, even if it wasn’t what, who, she really wanted.

“Here.” I wiped a sticky hand on my jeans and reached into my pocket. “I got you a present.” I pulled out the wolf charm I’d bought for Marisol and pushed it into Celia’s small palm. “You’re supposed to string it on a necklace, but you can just keep it with you until you can find a chain.”

“You got this for
me
?”

I adopted the confident tone and straight-spined posture of someone who wouldn’t be so shameless as to lie to a child. “Of course.”

“Why?”

I paused, scrambling for an answer. I’d bought the charm for Marisol as a token representing her big plans for the future, but now that the charm was Celia’s, it had to mean something different.

“It’s a reminder for you to be brave,” I replied, “like a wolf.”

Celia pinched the charm between her thumb and index finger and examined its hard details. I couldn’t tell if she believed me. Even so young, she seemed more naturally skeptical than her sister.

“I’m going upstairs to check on Ruben, alright?” I said, clearing my throat and backing away. “Promise me you won’t handle the knife again. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Celia turned to watch me go. “I promise.” The absent way she said it made me wonder if
I
could believe
her
.

I stood in front of Ruben’s closed door and listened to the muffled chatter of his television for a second before knocking and calling out his name. His reply was to tell me to get the hell away from his house—that no one needed my sympathy and that my being there was making everything worse.

I was on my way back to the staircase when I heard a woman’s voice—clear like crystal—coming from the television inside Ruben’s room.

“ . . . newly released details reveal connections between the cases of Sara Fikes and Marisol Reyes . . . ”

I slammed the heel of my palm against the door. “Ruben! Let me in! I need to hear this!”

“Are you deaf?” Ruben bellowed. “I said go away.”

I pressed my ear against the wood. All I could hear were inaudible clicks and murmurs. Then, more plainly: “ . . . go now to Detective Mara Lopez, of the San Juan Police Department, who has been overseeing both investigations.”

“Ruben!” I beat the door again. “What are they saying?”

After being met with silence, I grabbed the doorknob with both my hands and shook it. No use. I hit the door again, determined not to stop until Ruben opened it. Finally, he did. Like it had been downstairs, the air in his room was stale, full of the stink of breath.

“
What
is your problem?” he barked. “We’re trying to mourn here!”

My eyes only landed on his face for a second, and I supposed he was grateful for that. It was obvious he’d been crying. His eyelids were swollen; pink streaks and splotches marred his cheeks.

Ruben repeated his question, but by then I’d shifted my focus to the television. Detective Lopez had evidently just been asked a question, and her thin, red-painted lips were a tight line as she tried to formulate the appropriate response.

“
Both of their bodies were found in the same general area,” she said into the cluster of microphones positioned in front of her face, “and they were in roughly the same physical condition.”

“Can you describe that condition, detective?” asked someone off camera.

Mara Lopez sighed, not out of impatience, but because she must have anticipated that what she was going to say next might be difficult for some people to hear.

“For the most part their conditions are consistent with what we see from drowning victims here in the tropics. The temperature and saline content of the water along with the plant and marine life tend to leave fairly typical . . . ” She paused to find the right word,
“ . . .
traces on the body.”

I again pictured Marisol: blue, bloated, tangled in seaweed, the skin of her lips torn like bits of thin paper. My stomach pitched.

“I’m not watching this anymore.” Ruben punched the television’s power button and then spun around to shove me hard in the chest. “Now get out, Luke!”

I hesitated, but in the end, didn’t fight back. It wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t stand to be in that house anymore anyway.

Back at the hotel, I skipped dinner and instead pilfered a couple of bottles of wine from my dad’s stash to take up to my room, where I was determined to drink until I blacked out. But when I stepped through the door, my foot landed directly on a textured cream-colored card.

I snatched it off the ground and immediately recognized the handwriting.

Please come back,
it read.
My name is Isabel.
I’d like to talk to you about the disappeared girl.

Nine

THE FRONT GATE
of the scientist’s house wasn’t an option. I grabbed on to it and shook, but its network of locks held it firmly in place.

If forced to guess, I’d have to say the wall surrounding the courtyard was about seven feet tall. No sweat. If I took a running start, I could plant my foot on the wall, push off, and use the momentum to hoist myself over.

I stepped across Calle Sol and looked around to make sure I was alone. If I was Catholic, I would’ve crossed myself like the señoras do when they need a little extra help from the man upstairs—touching the middle finger of their right hands to their forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder. Since I’m not, I steadied myself with a breath and then shot across the street in five long strides. When the sole of my sneaker hit the wall, it immediately lost traction, causing the entire right side of my face to slam into plaster-covered concrete. I lamely tried to catch myself with my open palms, but went down hard.

I swallowed a string of curses, peeled myself off the ground, wiped the bits of blue plaster off my hands, and went across the street to prepare for another running start. Again, I crossed in five even strides. The sole of my shoe hit the wall—this time it stuck. Momentum carried me a few precious inches, and I was able to grab on to the top of the wall with both hands. From there, I pulled myself up and managed to swing my right leg over the edge.

For a second, I straddled the top of the wall, catching my breath and surveying the dark courtyard and the small, weird forest it contained. After a moment teetering between two worlds, I swung my left leg over and dropped into the garden. The bottoms of my sneakers met slick bricks, and I lost my balance. The last thing I heard before my head hit the ground and I blacked out was a shout that may or may not have come out of my own mouth.

I woke up to a dizzying blur of green leaves and dark sky. Scattered drops of rain were falling into my open mouth and onto my dry lips. Above me, the indistinct figure of a small person came into view, a veil of black surrounding a face. The person, a girl, was saying something; it sounded like she was shouting at me through water.

I was being moved. I could feel my skin scraping against stone. After mumbling something about a butcher’s son and love letters, I blacked out again.

I woke for the second time to the sound of a wasp buzzing in my ear. My eyes snapped wide open, took in the bright moon above, and slammed back shut. I brushed my hand up against my ear, but the buzzing didn’t go away.

I remembered: jumping, falling through the leaves, the feeling of being dragged across something hot and hard. My forearms itched. I held them up to my eyes. It looked like the skin on both was covered in blisters.

A girl said, “You’re awake. I was starting to get worried.”

I craned my head in the direction of the voice. That slight movement hurt,
bad
.

“Who . . . ?” Just the act of forming a word was painful. My peripheral vision was filled with leaves, and they seemed to sway in slow motion, like the tentacles of a giant sea creature.

The girl leaned over me, and the dark and wavy tips of her hair nearly grazed my face. “What was that you said earlier about a butcher?”

“A butcher’s
son
,” I slurred.

“A
what
?”

“I . . . I’m sorry.” I dragged one of my palms across my eyes to try and push the pain out of my head. It didn’t work. “I thought you were a nun.”

“You know,” she said after a pause, “I’ve never thought of it that way. You’re sort of right, though. I am a nun. And this is my convent. Welcome. Finally.”

Slowly and with my head still spinning, I stood. I blinked—one, two, three times—and the girl finally came into focus. She didn’t have green skin and grass for hair. She was around my age, but bird-boned and short, dressed in jeans that were patched in places and rolled up to her ankles. The hood of the blue long-sleeved sweatshirt she was wearing was thrown over her head in a way that made her look fierce, like a cruiserweight primed for a boxing match.

Prune-purple rings circled her near-black eyes; her brow was furrowed like someone who’d spent her entire life anticipating a fight.

I wasn’t feeling like much of an opponent right then. Too much was still out of focus.

My forearm itched like crazy, so I scratched it. This was, apparently, was not the right thing to do.

“Don’t do that!” One of the girl’s hands flew in my direction.

I kept scratching.

“Those types of rashes have a tendency to spread,” she said, cringing. “Just leave it be. You’ll be fine in a few hours.”

I stopped to hold my arms up to my eyes so I could study the tiny white dots on my skin by the light of the moon. The dots squirmed like maggots. I blinked; they stopped.

“You landed in the plants,” the girl said. “I had to move you away from them.”

I dropped my arms and peered at the girl in front of me who still seemed less like a solid person and more like a dark, nebulous mass.

The only thing I could do was state the obvious: “They’re poisonous. They cause hallucinations. I heard they killed a kitten.”

“My dad’s a scientist. He studies plants.” She smirked. “You have similar aspirations, yeah?”

Her accent was strange: partially British or Irish like that of the scientist, but also suggesting that she’d spent a lot of time on the island. There were hints of Spanish in the rhythm of her words and the way she rounded her vowels.

I ignored her dig and cast a glance through the open glass doors of the house that led to the lit dining room I’d stood in the previous day. My eyes moved to a corner of the courtyard, where a white hammock was strung up near a massive pile of water-logged hardback books and the remains of a single smashed terra-cotta pot. The gold lettering on the spines of the books shimmered; squinting, I tried to make out the author. Borges, probably. It wouldn’t have surprised me. It also wouldn’t have surprised me if a red and green macaw flew out of the plants, landed on my shoulder, and starting reciting poetry or some shit.

A thin wisp of clarity filtered through my brain long enough for me to remember why I’d launched myself into this bizarre situation. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the notes.

“What is this?” I asked, holding the slips of paper between us. “How do you know my name?”

The girl tilted her head as if she’d misheard me. “Everyone knows your name.”

“Not everyone knows what room I stay in.”

“Yes, they do. It’s the haunted one.”

I focused on the girl’s eyes, which now appeared so black that they reminded me of the shiny jet stones of a brooch my mother had worn to my grandmother’s—my dad’s mother’s—funeral. She’d referred to it as her “mourning jewelry.”

The girl—Isabel, I now remembered the note had said—was examining me, too, and I could tell by the way her lips were pursed that she wasn’t completely convinced she liked what she saw.

I flicked at her last note. “Why did you call her this?”

“Call her what?”

“The disappeared girl.”

“I overheard the señora next door say that.” Isabel still hadn’t taken her eyes from mine. “She was talking to one of our neighbors about a girl named Marisol. She said she’d gone missing and that a boy named Lucas found her on the beach.”

“How do you know I know a girl named Marisol?”

“Because the other night I heard the two of you joking about trying to jump over the wall of my house.” She paused for a beat. “My
cursed
house.”

I choked out a laugh.

“You’re kidding, right? How about on the night
before
Marisol and I were
joking
outside your house, you pelted me in the face with rocks?”

Isabel finally broke eye contact. Her thin lips twisted into a sneer as she reached up to tug at the hood of her sweatshirt.

“You were bothering me,” she muttered.

“
Bothering
you? This is why you asked me to come here? To rub salt in my wounds and tell me that I’ve been
bothering
you?”

“It’s not like you’re the first couple to ever go down there.” Isabel threw out her hand, gesturing toward the stone wall on the far end of the courtyard. “I’m tired of being subjected to everyone’s amorous encounters. I . . . ”

Her mouth slammed shut as if she were trying to catch whatever words were going to fall out of it next, but it wouldn’t have mattered because she’d pretty much already landed hard onto my wrong side.

Isabel thought for a moment and changed her course. “I’m sorry. Okay? I wanted you to come so I could apologize. I was playing tricks before—with the other letters, and the stones. I realize now it was all in such poor taste, considering all that’s happened to you recently.”

“All that’s happened,” I echoed. “Marisol is
dead
.”

It was the first time I’d said those words out loud. In the next instant, my left temple burst with pain, and white light flooded my vision. I had to slam my eyes shut and press my fingers hard into my forehead just to keep my balance.

“You’re not well,” I heard Isabel say.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “But if you wanted to apologize, there are better ways. You could have just written
I’m sorry
on one of your cards. You could have knocked on my door. You didn’t have to formally request my presence and make me dive in here like an idiot.”

“It’s not that simple, actually.”

The pain in my head eased enough so that I could peer at Isabel through narrowed eyes. She’d retreated away from me, dissolving herself into the shadows cast off by a canopy of leaves.

She was clearly so strange. All this time cooped up in this house had really taken a toll on her ability to act like a normal human being.

“Why are you hiding?”

She paused and threw her shoulders back. “I’m not.”

What a terrible liar Isabel Ford was. Even with my head throbbing and thoughts turning about as smoothly as rusted-over gears, I could see she was trying to give off a casual confidence through the feigned conviction in her stance and in her voice. I’d just done almost the exact same thing at Ruben’s house with Celia.

“This is the second time I’ve come here and made a fool of myself because of you.”

She didn’t respond, so I went on. “You knocked over that pot yesterday, right?”

Still, silence.

“
Right
?
”

Her reply was maddeningly simple: a shrug and an uptick of her chin that meant yes.

“What for?”

Isabel scowled; her brief façade of cool confidence fractured. She ran a hand roughly across her cheek and her chin. It may have been a trick of the light or my unreliable vision, but her nail beds appeared black, as if her fingers had been recently slammed in a car door.

“Like I said, it was a gag. Just a stupid prank. I didn’t think you’d actually come.”

Again: an obvious lie, but she didn’t leave any time for me to point it out before she went on.

“I needed to get
you.
” Her first finger emerged from the cuff of her sweatshirt to point at me. “To come
here
.” She pointed at her feet. “Leaving the house for long stretches of time is not in my best interest. I’m sick. That’s why I . . .
hide
.”

“So, you’re contagious?”

She frowned. “That’s not the way I’d describe my condition, no.”

“How would you describe your
condition
then?”

Isabel didn’t respond. Instead, her eyes landed on my arms, which were burning from my wrists to the creases of my elbows, and then traveled to the plants around us that pulsed as if held together by a singular heart. A wasp, possibly the same one that had been buzzing around my ear earlier, dipped and weaved in between where she and I were standing. When it flew roughly an inch from her face, Isabel turned her chin slightly in its direction. She blew out as if extinguishing a candle flame. For a split-second the wasp hovered in the air. Then it dropped dead to the ground.