Mother May I(27)

A great wave of voices welled up from the party, people coalescing and hurrying forward. Spence spun and vomited again in a great, gushing arc that sent the Clausens and the bartender scuttling. It stopped the crowd. Spence staggered sideways, then went crashing to the ground.

A moment of near silence. Even the piano jangled to a discordant stop, the singer cutting off in mid-croon. Then everyone surged forward toward him again.

Mrs. Clausen called out, “Someone help!”

Mr. Clausen yelled, “Who here is a doctor?”

“Oh my God,” Gabrielle said.

Dr. Charles, a longtime client, and another man I didn’t know pushed out of the crowd and ran to Spence. Dr. Charles started barking orders over the hum of anxious voices, telling everyone to stay back.

“I should—” Marshall started.

“Stay with me!” I clutched his arm harder. Gabrielle paused, too.

A few people worked to hold back the others, one man bellowing, “Give the doctors room!”

Spence was thrashing, bucking and seizing, and more vomit spewed up from his mouth. It was brown and red, and red foam bubbled after from his lips. Was that blood? It was so bright against his pale skin, the green grass.

Dr. Charles and the other man turned him on his side to keep him from choking, one of them yelling more words that I couldn’t understand.

“Oh my God,” Gabrielle said again.

This was not an overdose. Nothing like. An overdose of roofies meant sleepiness. Unconsciousness. Maybe nausea, but not like this. Not these violent shudders and seizures, this eruption of bloody foam. Google would have mentioned this.

Which meant he was allergic? But I didn’t believe that. My heart was telling me a darker truth.

Whatever I had given him, it wasn’t roofies.

The mother had lied. Her daughter had never intended to get Spence alone. Maybe she wasn’t even here. Or maybe she was, either in a cocktail dress moving with the crowd, or all in black standing on one of the bridges that looked down on the gardens, or hidden on a quiet, shady path, like me. Watching. Making sure.

On the grass Spence went suddenly still. So very still.

Dr. Charles was seeking a pulse now, and then he was barking more orders. He was facing away, so his words were lost to me, but he and the other man rolled Spence onto his back. Dr. Charles started chest compressions, and I saw Spence’s blood-streaked face. His eyes stared up at the paper lanterns, blank and unblinking, as shiny as sea glass.

Panicked conversation swelled, the crowd edging forward, pushed from behind. Several people had their phones out. Calling 911, I hoped. I hoped not filming.

“Back up!” I heard a man yell in a high, frightened tone. “Please back up and give him room!”

“Is he breathing?” a woman called out. “Is he . . . is he . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

But Gabrielle could. “Is he dead?”

Watching the doctor’s desperate chest compressions shaking Spencer’s big body, watching his slack and unresponsive face, I knew the answer.

And I had handed him the pills. Whatever they’d been. Even now, tucked safe in my purse, I had the silver flask, monogrammed with my husband’s initials, sloshing with whiskey I’d dosed with the same toxin.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I heard someone saying, and it was me. Everything the mother had told me was a lie, and what did this mean for Robert?

I found myself backing away, tugging Marshall and Gabrielle both with me. His gaze on mine was searching.

Gabrielle, concerned, said, “Bree?”

I shook my head. I had no control over my twisting features. The invisible Visa in my purse was gone and, with it, Betsy’s bold and breezy smile. I’d killed Spencer. The woman who’d orchestrated it still had my baby.

“Bree?” Marshall echoed.

I let them both go. I was fumbling in my purse now. I pulled out the phone she’d left for me.

Nothing. No text, no missed calls.

I scrabbled farther, until my fingers found the cash I’d tucked into the bottom.

“I need help,” I said to Marshall. I pulled out a bill. I wasn’t sure what it was, even, but it was legal tender. I turned to Gabrielle and thrust it at her. “And, God, I need a lawyer.”

She was still staring at Spence’s inert form, stretched out heavy on the green lawn, but the money was in her peripheral vision. It trembled and wavered, and it took me a moment to understand that this was because my hand was shaking.

I’d been married to a lawyer long enough to know that if I told her about dosing Spence, privilege would not apply. We were at a cocktail party, on a dark path winding through shadowed beds and huge living statues. Any number of unseen ears could be nearby. We had no expectation of privacy. So I held the money out like a promise to be honest later, hoping she would help me.

She looked to Marshall first, silently asking something. I found myself looking at him, too, my eyes begging him to trust me. Betsy had, all her life.

“I don’t know what it’s about,” he told her. “But . . .” He glanced at me and then gave Gabrielle a short, sharp nod. Again, it felt so good to be this known, this trusted by him.

She took the bill. “Okay. I’m your lawyer. Let’s get out while we can and go someplace where we can talk.”

We turned and hurried up the path to the exit. My Lyft was just arriving. We all got in, and as we sped away, I heard sirens in the distance. Coming for Spence, I thought. An ambulance or paramedics on a fire truck sent to help him.