CHAPTER 20

My phone chimed in my pocket. I was surprised it still worked. It was Karter.

“Hey, Briseis,” he said. “You busy?”

I put him on speaker so I didn’t have to press the broken glass to my ear. “No, just coming from the garden.” I wasn’t ready to share what I’d seen with him yet.

“You wanna catch a movie?”

“Sure.” I was willing to do anything to get away from the Heart. Karter gave me a rundown of the movies at the local theater.

“Pick you up at seven?” he asked.

“Sounds good.”

I got to the house and was climbing the front steps when a car pulled into the driveway. An older man in jeans and a V-neck sweater stepped out. He smiled warmly and gave a little wave. He was completely bald and wore a pair of round glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

“You need something from the shop?” I asked. It couldn’t have been anything else.

“I do,” he said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Come in.” I opened the door, and Mom and Mo looked up from their spots on the couch.

The man waved at them. “Morning. I’m Isaac Grant.”

I looked him over as Mom and Mo stood to shake his hand.

“ ‘Grant’?” I asked. “Do you know Dr. Grant?”

“She’s my daughter,” the man said. “She told me you’d moved in and I thought I’d stop by to say hello and pick up a few things.”

Mom eyed the bag under my arm. “What’s that?”

“Weed,” I said.

Mom laughed the fakest laugh I’d ever heard and looked back and forth between me and Dr. Grant’s father.

“I’m joking,” I said. I turned to Isaac. “Seriously. Just a joke. Please don’t call your daughter to come get me.”

He held up his hands. “Your secret’s safe with me, but I can tell you she’s not in the business of enforcing laws about weed as long as Black folks are sitting in jail on possession charges while Karen and Brad are getting rich off edibles in Colorado.” He took out his wallet and flashed a card that looked like a driver’s license but had the words “Medical Marijuana Program” printed at the top. “If you can get this place certified, maybe you can be my new dispensary.”

For a second, I thought I saw actual dollar signs flash in Mom’s and Mo’s eyes.

“It’s not weed,” I said. “It’s for the shop. Some of the stuff is poisonous.”

Isaac put his wallet away. “So you’re back in business, then?”

I nodded. I showed him to the apothecary and slung the bag of oleander onto the counter. “Can I ask you to stand back for a minute? I don’t want you to get near this.”

Isaac took several steps back.

Leave it to Mom and her raw food phase, which lasted exactly three days, to point out that the closet with racks set inside that we’d come across in the shop looked like a big dehydrator, the kind you’d use to dry fruit leather, but on a bigger scale. We realized it was for drying out the plants before transferring them to the jars.

I went to the closet and pulled out the top rack, setting it on the counter. I reached for the oleander with my bare hand but stopped. I looked back at Isaac, who was, of course, watching my every move, so I grabbed a scoop and transferred the oleander to the drying rack without touching it.

“What, uh, what can I get for you?” I sounded like I was working the drive-through at McDonald’s, but it was better than asking, “What kind of wild shit can I grow in my weird garden for you?”

“I need two ounces of brimstone,” Isaac said.

“Um, what?”

“From the pits of hell.”

I whipped my head around.

“Forgive me,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest. “My humor has been described as dry, but not always appropriate.”

“Brimstone just sounds scary.”

“Technically, it’s sulfur,” he said. “But brimstone sounds more dramatic, and I love all things dramatic.”

I glanced toward the top shelves. Everything was in alphabetical order, but I couldn’t remember seeing anything marked brimstone, and it definitely wasn’t something I could grow in the garden—poison or otherwise.

I slid the ladder over and climbed up. Between a jar of Brazil nuts and a container of bryony was a circular indentation in the back wall of the shelf. I ran my fingers over it and a small door popped open. The smell of rotten eggs wafted out. A covered jar sat inside the hidden space. The label read Brimstone.

“I’ll assume by the look on your face that you found it,” he said.

Climbing down, I tried to hold the jar as far away from me as I could. As soon as I got to the bottom, I set it on the counter.

“Wanna take the whole thing?” I asked, nudging it toward him.

“Two ounces is all I need at the moment,” he said.

I searched the drawers for something to scoop the chunks of yellow sulfur from the jar. I’d never get the smell off my hand if I touched it. Shifting some papers around under the counter, I found a leather-bound book. I lugged it out and opened it on the counter.

Inside were stubs from countless receipts. A pound of mug-wort, a quarter pound of powdered acacia root, twenty-six sticks of palo santo, all accounted for with names and dates—Louise Farris, October 20, 1995; Hudson Laramie, June 12, 1990; Angela Carroll, August 14, 1993.

Near the back of the ledger was a log of names and dollar amounts, and I remembered that I was supposed to credit Lucille for the herbs she was going to pick up later. I searched until I found “Lucille Paris” and penned in a hundred dollars with the date. I set the book aside, found a pair of wooden tongs, and fished out a few pieces of brimstone, sitting them on the scale.

“I don’t know of many uses for sulfur,” I said. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Isaac came over to the counter, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “You can make a soap out of it. It kills mites on people and pets.” His voice was even, his words rehearsed.

“You have mites?” I asked. “Or your pet has mites?”

“My pet,” he said.

“A dog? A cat?” I didn’t think he was telling the truth.

He didn’t answer, but he chuckled. He studied me carefully, and then his gaze wandered to the shelves.