A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone Page A

doorway, she held both pill bottles in her hands. “How many of these have you been taking?”
    â€œTwo.” Liv was slick with sweat. Low in her belly, a spasm flicked on the right side. She imagined an ovary swelling inside her like a balloon.
    â€œFrom each bottle?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow often?”
    Liv wasn’t entirely certain. She’d taken them several times a day, but wasn’t sure if she’d actually timed the doses. “Every few hours,” she said.
    â€œHow many pills a day?”
    â€œI’m not sure.”
    Claire stepped closer and Liv felt herself recoil, and lower her eyes further, like a cornered dog. She reached her arms around her belly to keep it from bursting.
    â€œLiv, don’t fuck about. How many pills are you taking a day?”
    â€œSixteen, probably.”
    Claire relaxed. Liv felt it—the hardness—drain from the room. She glanced up at Claire and back at her shoes. Her stomach felt twisted and sick. She wanted to vomit and shower and sleep. More than anything, though, she wanted Claire to set the pills down,
turn, and leave without slamming the door. Liv didn’t want the pills anymore. She still felt bewildered. In the parking lot, the sobbing child, his angry mother, and nothing. She didn’t know why he was crying, or where she was exactly. When she thought about the snake, it seemed like something from a story, something she’d read to him. She wasn’t even afraid of snakes. Why would she have run from one?
    â€œYou’re only supposed to take two of each of these twice a day,” Claire said. “You’ve been taking four times the prescribed dosage.”
    â€œOh,” Liv said. She knew she’d vomit any moment, maybe into the sink, or on the bed, but definitely any moment. Shut up, she thought. Shut up and go away. Liv closed her eyes, breathed hard through her nose, but nothing could stop it now: the sickness, the wave of it breaking over both of them.
    â€œLiv?” Claire said, her voice entirely outside Liv’s head now, and muffled as though she were calling to Liv from outside the camper. Liv vomited. Choking, horribly painful, and it wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t catch her breath. Pulled then, from the bed, and the camper, out into the grass, where she could only retch and sob, and then slowly across the field toward the house. Slowly, with great care, the grass prickly on her skin; shivering and clammy in her damp clothes; and more retching, nothing left to expel except her own organs. Finally they were indoors, and Claire laid her down on the mat while she ran the bath.
    â€œYou’re like a rock star,” Claire said, not unkindly. And Liv almost laughed, vomit in her hair even—rank and filmy. Claire eased her shirt over her head. Liv couldn’t help, could barely hold herself upright. Then the shorts and boxers and Liv heard Claire grunt as she lifted—lifted!—Liv into the bathtub. In the bath, her spasms stopped, and hollowed now—her body a sieve—she slept.
    She woke alone in Claire’s bed. The sheets white, and roped around her naked body, she rolled toward the window where the light strained, and closed her eyes. Voices, from outside, only murmurs, and Liv felt thick-tongued and zombie-headed. She fell into sleep as though it were a well.

    Bailey smoked, twirled her cognac in the snifter, and regarded Claire. She’d brought Simon back to the house with her. Claire had dropped him off earlier in the evening, said she had to run some errands and would have dinner ready for both of them at seven.
    â€œWhere’s Liv tonight?”
    Claire took a bite of chocolate, chewed slowly. “She’s sleeping. Overdid it with the painting.”
    â€œI see,” Bailey said. “You look like you could sleep as well. I won’t stay long. How’s the book?”
    â€œI’m finished.”
    Bailey sat up, nearly dowsed