Page 89 of Potion Sickness

“Yes, yes,” she taps the review, pointing to a paragraph praising the production’s seamless stagecraft. “That one worked harder than anyone in the building.”

We didn’t tell her about anything, but Genie always seems to know.

“Well,” she says. “Except perhaps the cat. Wretched old thing, but he put on a good show.”

We stay an hour. She asks if we’ve eaten, as always, and tells Pru the flowers were nice. Pru presumably never told her about any flowers.

“You still owe that girl a phone call,” she says, when we’re gathering up to leave. “The Hartford girl. When you call her, tell her it was the boy. Vain as always. Just like I told you.”

She’s right. Damien turned up at the Manor yesterday afternoon, walking now, no wheelchair. He sat on my porch steps, declined coffee, and told me, off the record, that he’d been the one responsible for the tabloid leak. He sent it from an email account he made for the purpose, and then he sat back and waited.

“I’d rather be a scandal than a comeback story nobody covers,” he said. He said scandals get follow-ups.

“He potentially blew up Vivian’s marriage,” Pru says. “For coverage. Dana wouldn’t ride in the same car as her wife for two weeks.”

“He knows. That’s why he wanted to confess. He’d already been to see Vivian and Dana that morning. He’s paying for the article to be retracted, not that a retraction undoes anything.”

“And the photos,” Genie says. “The girl.”

“The photos were Skye’s,” I say. “She takes pictures of him constantly. She has thousands. He went through her camera roll one night while she slept and lifted them. She recognized her own photos in the story.”

“She knew?” Pru says. “That whole time?”

“She knew, and of course she covered for him.”

“They’re a matched set,” Pru says. “Good lord.”

* * *

In the car, I call Kayla, off the record, as promised. She listens to the whole thing and laughs for a while.

“A press kit for himself, about himself, leaked by himself,” she says. “Unsurprising, I guess.”

We’re barely out of the Hemlock Hill driveway when my phone rings again. It’s my parents — both of them, on speaker.

“Marigold,” my mother says.

“Yes?”

“The Hendersons have offered us the cottage through September,” she says. “The light on the bay in September is apparently something people speak about. Your father wants to see the light.”

“I want to see the light!” my father calls out.

“We’re planning to stay through the month,” my mother says, “if that’s all right.”

“It’s all right,” I say. “The wards are settled. The water heater and I have an understanding. Englebert has announced he’s wintering in the parlor.”

“And you have no plans for immediate return to Boston?”

It stings a bit, but she’s right. “Not at the moment,” I say.

“Good,” my mother says. “Then it’s arranged. Also, Marigold. The magazine piece was good. Just like the last one. Your father cut it out and stuck it on the refrigerator.”

She hangs up, as she does.

“On the refrigerator,” Pru says. “Wow. That’s basically a Harriet Wardwell Pulitzer.”

* * *