The Steep and Thorny Way(17)

I raised my hands in case he could see me through the cracks. “I swear. I left it behind. Let me in. I just spoke to someone. Someone who said you’re innocent.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Open up. I believe you.”

The door opened, and I stumbled into the small space lit by a kerosene lantern, with just a cot, a potbelly stove, and some old fishing rods parked against a wall. My knees and elbows crashed against floorboards half sunken into the earth. I smelled and tasted dirt. And fish.

The door closed behind me, and Joe crouched down by my side, shining that foul lantern into my eyes. Bright light cut across my corneas. I hissed and shrank back.

“What’s the matter with you?” He grabbed my arm and shoved the light even closer. “Your pupils are as large as dimes. What’d you take?”

“An elixir”—I pushed the lantern away—“from Mildred Marks.”

“Jesus!” He set the light on the ground beside him. “You look like the dope fiends I met in prison.”

“I don’t know what the Markses put in there, but”—I clasped his left elbow—“I spoke to him, Joe.”

“Who?”

“My father. My real father.”

“You . . .” His face blanched, and I watched his own pupils dilate. “You mean—”

“He said he should have stayed away from the doc that night. He puts full blame on Dr. Koning.”

Joe knelt so close to me, I smelled pond water in his hair and saw the C-shaped arc of the scar above his right eyebrow. His bottom lip looked as though it had once split open and tried to heal, with questionable success.

Without warning, the room swayed, and I had to cover my mouth to keep from retching. Kerosene smoke lodged in my lungs. I coughed and wheezed and curled onto my side, the heels of my palms pressed against my eye sockets.

“Hanalee.” Joe nudged my arm. “Wake up. You can’t go to sleep in here.”

“We should talk to Sheriff Rink.”

“I told the sheriff about Dr. Koning when he first threw me in jail. He didn’t listen to a f*cking word I said.”

I flinched at his language. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“There’s only one way to get rid of a man who got away with murder, Hanalee.”

I lowered my hands from my eyes and gaped at him. “He’s my stepfather, Joe.”

“He murdered your father.” Joe pointed toward the door. “He took that man’s life and robbed you of love and peace.”

“I can’t kill him.”

“Where’d you get that gun? From Laurence?”

“I’m not shooting Clyde Koning.”

“Talk to Fleur, then. She knows all about herbs and flowers, doesn’t she? I’m sure she’s aware of poisonous local plants and could—”

“No!” I sat back up. “I’m not tangling Fleur up in this mess. I’d kill myself before anything happens to her.”

“I can’t risk going back to that prison.”

“Well, you’re going to have to go back, because I’m not a killer.”

“Neither am I.”

I smacked his arm with the heel of my right palm. “You’re an ex-convict with nothing to lose. You’ve got no family, no money, no house, no love—”

He snatched my wrist and squeezed my bones between his fingers. “They’ll cut me up if I go back there.”

I tried to wrench myself away from him, but he pulled me forward and tipped me off balance.

“I’m like you, Hanalee.” His dark eyes glistened a few inches in front of mine. “I’ve got people who hate me and want to hurt me. There are doctors in that prison—barbarians with medical degrees who’ll do unspeakable things to change me if I ever go back. There’s no way in hell I’m going back there.”

Lamplight wavered and rippled across the wall behind him, stretching and shaking his shadow above the bed. He smelled so much like the pond beyond the shed, I imagined him diving down into the murky green depths and hiding among the underwater grasses whenever I wasn’t around.

“Are you sure murder is the only option?” I asked.

He nodded. “All you have to do is slip poisonous leaves into his tea or coffee—whatever he likes to drink. And I’ll get you out of town directly afterward.”

I squirmed. “Why don’t you just stab Dr. Koning and run?”

“I just told you—I can’t risk jail. Sheriff Rink would be after me the second I finished the job. He’d have the whole goddamned state searching for me with rifles and bloodhounds.”

“They’d hunt you down even faster if your skin was as dark as mine.”

“That’s not necessarily true.” He loosened his grip.

I lifted my chin. “I think you’re a coward, Joe.”

“If I murder Dr. Koning, I’d have to kill myself, too, just to make sure I don’t end up in that pen again. If it comes to that”—he turned his face away and swallowed, hard—“I’ll do it. But I think, if we’re careful, and you get to him from within that house, we can both end up safe and free in some other place that doesn’t want to get rid of us.”