The next day, I woke to a nurse prepping me for surgery. They removed a portion of my right kidney. A lab in Seattle examined the dissected tissue and discovered the culprit: amatoxin, which concentrates in the liver and kidneys twenty-four to forty-eight hours after ingestion of Amanita smithiana. Also present: traces of psilocin, from the wavy caps, which were likely in the broth with the mussels, likely why everyone was so strange at the wake. The Amanita, though, was for me alone. No one else on Marrow had fallen sick. It must have been in the birch liquor Katie had handed me, given me. I couldn’t prove it — the flask was lost. Later dried Amanita were found in the apothecary, along with samples of hundreds of other hallucinogenic and toxic species.
Mom paced the halls fretfully while I gave a statement to the state police — I insisted on doing that alone.
“When did you notice you were hallucinating?”
“In the woods, the trees were talking to me. I remember thinking that was strange.”
“Was this some sort of… ritual or something? Was everyone hallucinating?”
“No. That’s — no. Katie was hallucinating too, I think — I’m not sure. But I think that was just the wavy caps. We picked them off the graves earlier.”
“You picked hallucinogenic mushrooms earlier in the day?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think so, yes.”
“Off of graves? Which graves would those be?”
“I’m not making this up.”
“I don’t believe you are, ma’am. I just need to clarify.”
It went on like that until I pushed the button for the nurse and told her I was experiencing a seven on the pain scale. Mom told the detective to take a hike and called a lawyer. She stayed at a hotel nearby until the hospital released me, a week later. Greg came eventually, showing more fatherly concern than he ever had. And I was genuinely grateful when he brought me tabloid magazines and Peanut Buster Parfaits from the Dairy Queen up the street. Carey brought my car back from Orwell, along with the things I left at the cottage. My mother’s eyes lit up when he walked in the door. I shooed her from the room so that he could tell me what was happening, but I’m sure she only went because she thought we were making out.
They had found Jacob Swenson’s remains the second day, and a search of Rookwood turned up traces of his blood on the stairs and floorboards. The theory was murder, possibly manslaughter. Tuck was the primary suspect, because of his past, and because he was known as Jacob’s occasional handyman. But how many accessories were there? Why had they left the body in the barn? No one from the Colony would say, so they were all implicated.
Carey said, “I know, I get it. But it looks bad, Lucie. Really, really bad for all of them. They didn’t even bury him in their own cemetery.”
“It was probably part of the experiment, like the whale — maybe they were trying something new,” I said. “He wanted to be a part of the project. But the only ones who knew about it were Tuck and Katie, Sister and Maggie.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t,” I snapped. “I’m trying to understand. They couldn’t bury him in the usual way, or everyone in the Colony would have known.”
“You were wandering around hallucinating and you found him. Someone else would have found him.”
“Between the mycelium and insects, I don’t think he would’ve lasted very long.”
I don’t know why I wanted to spare my mother the details. She saw it all on the news in her hotel room anyway.
“That cult could have buried you alive on their mushroom farm!” she said.
“Stop it, Mom. It’s not a cult.”
“Jesus Christ. You have Stockholm syndrome, Lucie. It may be some kind of eco-cult, but it’s still a fucking cult.”
If I had just told her everything from the beginning, would it have made more sense to her, how easily the fight for something fundamentally good can go astray in human hands? It’s still a fight; fights get bloody. She accused me more than once of still being under the influence of the psilocybin. She tried to talk the internist doing rounds into ordering a psych evaluation.
“That’s good, Mom, just ship me off to therapy again,” I hollered at her.
Months later, in a deposition, Elle would tell what she heard one night: Maggie and Tuck having words. Sister J. had asked Tuck to check on Jacob. Jacob had been drinking a lot, going on and off his meds. They had all been worried. He found Jacob at the bottom of the stairs, bloody but breathing, barely conscious. He panicked. If Jacob’s family took over the Trust, the Colony would face eviction and worse, when someone found the graves, the psychedelics they’d been growing. Tuck wanted to get Jacob back to the Colony to clean him up. He had loaded him into the Colony’s boat, taken him back to Marrow, to Maggie. But on the way, Jacob started convulsing. He died in the night. They knew his injuries looked suspicious. What could they do, but protect the others from culpability by hiding his remains, disposing of them away from the rest of the Colony’s dead? But by then, everyone had made up their minds. Tuck, Maggie, and Sister all pleaded no contest in exchange for an end to the investigation. No contest. They didn’t have any fight left in them. Tuck was extradited to California to face the arson and attempted murder charges. Katie, Elle, and Jen pled down and received house arrest and community service.
When the next commercial comes on, I take my beer into the bathroom and pick up the test. Only one pale pink line; not two. I bury the stick under toilet paper in the trashcan. I drink the rest of the beer and pull the phone onto the bed. My urine may be unreliable, with my kidneys the way they are now, so I’ll try again in the morning.
I pick up the receiver and dial Mom’s landline, staring out the window at the main street, burly men piling out of a van at the town’s only diner. She picks up on the third ring.
“Hi, Mom.”
I hear her take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Lucie, I’ve been calling every day.” Her voice is strained but soft, spent, like she has been crying.
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.” I’m tense already, hearing her voice. “I’ve been up at a fire lookout. Carey’s been staying at the station a lot. The fires are really bad right now. But I’m in Prairie City now; we’ve evacuated the cabin. You don’t need to worry.”
I hear her measured breathing.
“So you haven’t heard?”
“What? Heard what?”
“Oh, Luce. I’m so sorry.”
I know what she’s going to say before she says it. Her voice gets younger, all of a sudden. It’s her voice from years ago, when she was telling me that Daddy wasn’t on the boats coming back from Marrow.
“They found Katie on Marrow. She killed herself, sweetheart.”
I feel something pull my insides to the floor; then I draw back up as if on a spring and fly right up into the air over my body, on the hotel bed, holding the phone to my ear. My mother is saying something else now, and maybe I see the words in my mind’s eye, as if in a thought bubble above me, but they don’t mean anything yet, as if I’m not reading them.
Then I’m saying, “When?”
And I’m hearing her answer, “Yesterday.” And I’m counting back in my mind, trying to find some measure of the distance between here and there, on foot, by car, by bus, by train, by ferry, by whatever means necessary. How?