Sweet Poison

Jane Lawless:
Owner of the Lyme House Restaurant in Minneapolis and the Xanadu Club in Uptown.

Cordelia Thorn:
Artistic director at the Allen Grimby Repertory Theater in St. Paul. Jane’s closest friend.

Raymond Lawless:
Defense attorney. Jane and Peter’s father. Candidate for governor of Minnesota.

Peter Lawless:
Photographer, videographer. Jane’s brother.

Kenzie Mulroy:
Professor of cultural anthropology at Chadwick State College in Chadwick, Nebraska. Jane’s partner.

Charity Miller:
Assistant account manager at American Eagle Bank & Trust. Volunteer for the Lawless campaign.

Gabriel Keen:
Executive recruiter. Charity’s ex-fiancé.

Corey Hodge:
Ex-con. Car mechanic.

Mary Glynn:
Corey’s aunt. Housekeeper.

Serena Van Dorn:
Corey’s ex-girlfriend.

Luke Durrant:
Computer specialist working with the Lawless campaign.

Reverend Christopher Cornish:
Methodist minister.

Julia Martinsen:
Doctor of oncology.

Neil Kershaw:
Doctor of oncology.

A. J. Nolan:
Ex—homicide cop turned PI. Jane’s friend.

W
hen you return home from hell, people watch you. If you’ve ever been there and back, you know what I mean
.

Your friends, your family, they search for the cracks, the wounds, the inner disfiguring that suggests a deeper, more fundamental breakdown. You look the same. Maybe you even act the same. Eventually, you see them getting tired of the game. That’s probably too harsh. For some, it’s not a game; they really care. But they get tired of taking your temperature every five minutes, nonetheless. They tell you straight out, “You’re back from the brink. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Count your blessings. Get on with it.”

You want to give them a little love tap with an ice pick, but there’s never an ice pick around when you really need one
.

Instead, you take their advice. You get on with it as best you can. But your priorities, what used to be important to you, have altered. You have a passion now, one that, in your wildest imagination, you never dreamed would possess you. It’s so sweet, overpoweringly so, that you can’t help yourself, even though you know it has the power to destroy everything you love
.

So you wrestle with that awhile until you think you really have taken a dive off the deep end. But you’re addicted. You’re out of control
.

Listen closely now, because you’re about to hear some truth
.

That passion, that sweet poison, is the most intense high you’ve ever felt or ever will feel. It boils in your veins until your skin catches fire. It turns your eyes to lasers
.

And all would be well except that you remember something disturbing that you once read: And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee
.

You don’t know what that means, but in your bones, you know you better give it some very serious thought
.

Late October

J
ane carried two extralarge air pots filled with the Xanadu’s gourmet hot chocolate into her father’s campaign office. It was Saturday afternoon, one of the busiest days of the week at the club, but Jane had set her priorities the day her father entered the race for governor of Minnesota. She was fiercely determined to do everything she could to help him win the election.

Jane brought food for the employees and volunteer staff several times a week, and spent as much time as she could squeeze out of her busy schedule to work the phone banks, stuff envelopes, knock on neighborhood doors with information about her father’s political positions, deliver lawn signs—anything and everything that needed to be done. Time was running short. Election Day was a little more than two weeks away.

The campaign office was located on the first and second floor of the Gussman Building, deep in the heart of St. Paul’s Midway district. The most recent polls, including the one the campaign staff had just completed, put her father ahead of his Republican opponent, Don Pettyjohn, by eleven points. Even correcting for error, that was a substantial lead. All signs at the moment pointed to a win. Because
of that, Jane couldn’t understand why there were so many long faces on the volunteer workers.

Entering the break room, Jane set the air pots down on a long table covered in a red plastic tablecloth. She found a box under the table that was filled with stacks of paper cups and began to set them out along with napkins. As she worked, she noticed a number of volunteers walking past the door, heading for the reception area. By the time she was done arranging the napkins, a couple of the volunteers were actually running.

Seeing Charity Miller, one of the volunteers, pause in the doorway, searching for something inside a file folder, Jane called out to her. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Jane … hi.” She seemed startled. “I didn’t know you were here. You must have come in the back way.”

Charity was in her early twenties, pretty, fresh faced, and eager. She’d been donating her time since January, when Jane’s father had first thrown his hat into the political ring. Her friendliness and genuine empathy drew her into other people’s problems a little too easily, which caused her to waste a lot of time, but her warmth and willingness to do just about any job, no matter how boring, had won her high marks at the campaign office. Jane liked her enormously.

“It’s your father,” said Charity, biting her lower lip, looking suddenly anxious. “His plane was supposed to land in St. Cloud half an hour ago, but there was some sort of problem.”

“What kind of problem? Where is he?” The face of Paul Wellstone flashed through her mind. He’d been a deeply loved Minnesota senator. His plane had gone down in bad weather up near Eveleth in 2002, killing everyone on board. Jane’s dad owned a Cessna. He’d been piloting it himself around the state, pretty much nonstop, since the campaign had begun.

“We don’t know,” said Charity. “But Maria’s in touch with the St. Cloud airport.”