Chapter 9

The trooper called for backup. While we waited, he had me sit at the kitchen table and tell him everything. I kept my voice steady. I told him about the bitter pills, the clinic box of temazepam, the crisis-line impersonation, Rhonda’s false notes. I told him about the sugarhouse, the backhand, the staged fall. I told him about Walter’s pendant, and the card, and the way Luke had smashed the monitor without ever checking the slot.

Maribel tried to interrupt. “She’s confused. She’s been seeing things.”

“Ma’am,” Gagnon said. “I need you to be quiet.”

Rhonda sat on the couch with her tablet clutched to her chest. She hadn’t said a word since the trooper arrived. Her face was gray.

“Rhonda,” I said. “You wrote that I left the stove on. You wrote it before I said anything. You’re Maribel’s cousin.”

Rhonda’s mouth opened. Closed. She looked at Maribel. Maribel looked away.

“Is that true?” Gagnon asked.

“She’s family,” Rhonda whispered.

“You falsified home-health notes?”

“I didn’t-I only wrote what Maribel told me.”

“That’s a crime.”

Rhonda started to cry. Maribel stood up. “She’s lying. She’s trying to cover herself.”

“Sit down,” Gagnon said.

Luke hadn’t moved from the corner. His eyes kept going to the card in my hand. I could see him calculating. If he could get it, he could destroy it. If he could get to me, he could make me say I lied.

“Cora,” he said. “Think about the baby. You don’t want to do this.”

“I am doing this for the baby.”

“You’ll lose everything. The farm. The house. Me.”

“I already lost you,” I said. “I just didn’t know it.”

The backup arrived at 9:10. Two more cruisers, their lights flashing red and blue across the ice. The dooryard filled with officers. One of them took Luke by the arm. He didn’t resist. He looked small suddenly, his jaw slack, his charm gone.

“Luke Danforth, you’re under arrest for domestic assault and unlawful restraint,” Gagnon said. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Maribel started talking fast. “I’m a nurse. I was trying to protect her. She’s mentally ill. I have paperwork.”

“You can explain it at the station,” Gagnon said. “We’re going to need your license number and your tote.”

An officer took the commitment folder. Another took Rhonda’s tablet. Rhonda was crying openly now, saying she didn’t mean it, that Maribel told her to. Maribel’s face was stone.

I stood by the table with the card in my hand. The trooper held out an evidence bag. I dropped the card in. Then the capsules. He sealed it and wrote my name on the label.

“Can I go?” I asked.

“Where?”

“To my sister’s. In Morrisville. With Walter.”

Gagnon looked at Walter, who was sitting up in bed with his pendant back around his neck. “He’s your father-in-law?”

“He’s my family,” I said.

“We’ll need a statement tomorrow.”

“I’ll give one.”

He nodded. “You can go.”

I went into Walter’s room and helped him put on his coat. His hands trembled, but he smiled at me. “You got him,” he said.

“We got him.”

Outside, the ice was still falling, but the power had flickered back on. The farmhouse windows glowed yellow. Luke was in the back of a cruiser. Maribel was in another, still talking, still trying to spin her story. Rhonda sat on the porch step with her head in her hands.

I helped Walter into my sister’s car. She’d driven up from Morrisville as soon as I’d managed to text her from the trooper’s phone. She didn’t ask questions. She just hugged me and put the heat on high.

As we pulled out of the dooryard, I looked back at the sugarhouse. The evaporator was dark. The feed bucket was still there. The monitor was in pieces on the kitchen floor.

But the card was in an evidence bag, and Walter was beside me, and the baby kicked once, strong and certain.