Page 99 of Poison Wood

Cause of Death: Accidental opioid overdose.

The sound that comes out of my mouth is part gasp, part cry.

I scan the words, looking for anything that says aneurysm, but find only terms likeconcentration levelsandmetabolitesandsigns of respiratory depression.

I cover my eyes with my free hand and dig my fingers into my temples, where a thundering headache is building. I give myself a moment to catch my breath. My mind is tripping over one word: why.

Why, Dad? Why have a coroner change it? Why lie to me?

Maybe because a ten-year-old doesn’t need to know that truth. But he should have come to me as an adult and told me. I deserved to know that. I think about my mother after she’d fallen from that horse. The way she pulled away from my father, from me, claiming to be tired when we’d try to get her to do something with us. The rattle I’d always hear in her purse. Pills?

I fold the paper and place it back in the shirt where I found it. I put the shirt back in the drawer and shut it.

Then I stand up and scream. I scream until my voice starts to crack. I release everything that’s been building since I got back to this place. And of all of it, that note from the coroner says it all. It tells me my father is capable of lying to me ... for years. Even worse, he can use his power to cover something up.

I walk out of the study and call the dogs. They run up as I grab the truck keys from the kitchen counter. I herd them into the laundry room and give them each a bone. Then I grab a coat from the mudroom and open the garage.

The rain is still coming down in sheets.

I back out, and the wipers swish rapidly across the windshield. I work to keep my thoughts from getting too wild, but I’m losing that battle.

I punch Debby’s number, and she answers on the third ring.

“Hey there,” she says.

“Hey,” I say. “I’m coming up there.”

“Oh, okay,” she says. “Well—”

“Don’t argue with me. I need to see him.” I start for the front gate but stop. If the news van is idling there, its reporter is going to have new questions to yell at me. I back up and turn into the woods instead, stopping at the metal gate. “Hang on.”

I jump out in the rain, and I’m drenched in seconds. I should have grabbed a raincoat. I unlock the metal gate and swing it open and race back for the truck.

“You still there?” I say when I shut the door.

“Yes.”

“How is he?” I pull the truck through the narrow opening.

“Well, they want to keep him an extra night, but he’ll get to go home tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” my father says in the background.

I stop on the other side of the gate. “Hang on again,” I say. I leap out and relock the gate. Back in the truck’s cab, I wish now for a towel and a raincoat. “I’m back.”

“He says he’s fine,” Debby says.

I pull out from the woods behind the neighbor’s house, thankful my father’s old truck has four-wheel drive. I slip a bit on the muddy path, but I don’t get stuck. I exit onto the street, slinging mud from the tires.

Then I hear a voice in the room other than Debby’s and my father’s. “Who’s that?”

“Well,” Debby says. “We have a visitor.”

A chill ripples under my skin. “Who?” I say.

“Hon, what’s your name again?” Debby says.

The answer is muffled, but I hear it just fine. “Erin Stockwell.”