Chapter 6
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The Illness
Something is wrong with Steve. Conflicting diagnoses. Tara moves in to take care of him. The symptoms don't match any single explanation. Neither does her attentiveness.
Poisoning
9 chapters
All chapters tagged with Poisoning
Act I
Chapter 7
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The Wine Bottle
She threw a wine bottle at his chest. The relationship ends. Or it should have. The breakup has the shape of a Gone Girl exit — perfect victim, perfect villain, nothing quite adding up.
Chapter 9
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The Brooklyn Apartment
Tara finds an apartment in a mob neighborhood down the street from her sister. She asks Steve to come help look at places for the baby. He goes to the hospital instead. The door closes behind him.
Act III
Chapter 19
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The Leaning Tower
Steve moves into a sinking building and goes to the police. The building absorbs its lean internally. So does the investigation.
Chapter 20
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The Niacin Flush
A wine-and-art event. Two women who walk past the table too many times. Fifteen minutes later, his skin turns red and his body heats up. Tara records the entire episode. He recognizes the feeling from exercise supplements: niacin.
Chapter 21
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She Asked Me to Put Drugs in Your Wine
The nanny approaches Steve in the kitchen: 'This will probably get me fired.' She has a brother in the FBI. Her brother told her to tell Steve immediately. The poisoning stops being a suspicion.
Chapter 22
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"You Almost Made Me Leave My Daughter"
A message arrives from Tara. Dramatic, accusatory, the kind of thing she sends often enough that it reads like noise. The phrase about leaving her daughter is a warning. Steve doesn't recognize it yet.
Act VI
Chapter 31
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The Reno Bottle
Steve recounts illness after sharing a bottle carried from San Francisco to Reno, and the pregnancy loss that followed. He identifies this as his fourth discovery. His separately documented 2019 urine result is distinguished from the bottle analysis and Aunt K's reports, which have not yet been located.
Act VII
Chapter 34
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Four Discoveries
Steve places his four discoveries side by side: the 2017 lithium result, the Brooklyn episode, the nanny’s account and the Reno bottle. The chapter distinguishes the located laboratory reports and testimony from the bottle analysis and paired results still to be found.