He saw his grandmother’s old hands turning the pages of a weathered book back in Kingston. Saw the sketch of the same flowers. Heard her voice: The prettiest poisons do their work quietly. Oils on the leaves, baby. Touch them wrong and they get into the skin, the blood, the air.
The doctors weren’t looking at the room. They were looking only at the baby.
And now they were preparing surgery.
Marcus could see it in the rush, the instruments, the movement of bodies. They were about to cut Oliver open searching for a hidden cause that did not exist. The operation would kill him faster than the poison.
For one last moment Marcus thought of his mother. If he did what he was thinking about, she could lose everything. They could lose the cottage, the job, the fragile life she had built through years of swallowing humiliation. He could walk away. Pretend he hadn’t understood. Save himself.
But then he thought of his grandmother telling him that knowledge was an inheritance, one that mattered only if it was used when it counted.
So Marcus stood up from behind the fountain and ran toward the mansion.