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“Stop worrying about us, Julia,” Grant said before he kissed her hand. “You need to save your strength and get better.”

“I still don’t understand how this happened?”

Kyle returned with a nurse carrying a tray of food. “Okay, nice and easy,” he said as he raised her bed. “You okay?”

“A little dizzy, but I’m okay.”

She breathed out a long breath as she stared down at the jello and broth, her stomach churning. With a grimace, she took a spoonful of broth. “I still don’t understand how I got arsenic poisoning.”

“We’re trying to figure that out,” Kyle answered. “The way this came on, it was a prolonged exposure to a fairly minimal amount at each time. No one was certain if you had any foods consistently in the last few days.”

She took a bite of the jello, her stomachache easing a little. Her forehead pinched as she tried to recall what she’d eaten in the last few days.

“You don’t have to think about it now,” Grant said as he squeezed her hand.

“Actually, if she has any idea, I’d like to hear it,” Kyle said. “We can’t have this happening again.”

“Uh,” Julia said before she ate another scoop of jello. “I mean, I had my usual breakfast.”

“We already tested the oatmeal, milk, brown sugar, raisins, orange juice, everything from breakfast.”

“Everything?” Julia asked.

“Everything,” Grant answered. “Worthington tore the kitchen apart.”

“You don’t think he did it, do you?” Alicia asked.

Julia shifted in the bed as Grant’s jaw clenched. They both said, “No,” at the same time.

“Worthington would never hurt Julia or any of us,” Sierra said.

“Okay, noted. This time the butler didn’t do it,” Alicia said with a weak grin that faded quickly as Sierra glared at her.

Julia returned to the jello, pleased that it was going down fairly easily. “I don’t think I had anything else more than once over the past few days.”

“Ice cream?” Grant asked.

Julia flicked her gaze to him. “No, I did not have ice cream. I don’t eat it as much as you think.” She took another bite of jello. “And besides, you said Worthington checked everything in the kitchen.”

“So, what else could it be?” Alicia asked. “What else have you had consistent contact with?”

Kyle shook his head as he sighed. “Whatever it was, you got worse even after you stopped eating.”

Julia let her head fall back against her pillow as her mind worked overtime. “But I did eat. Could I have absorbed it before I threw up?”

“Not that fast. You may not have recovered but you wouldn’t have gotten as bad as you did. No, you had another dose of it from somewhere. But where?”

She raked through her mind, trying to find something that was consistent over the days, something that fit with the time frame to have made her worse after she’d been sick.

After a moment, she tossed away her plastic spoon with a sigh. “There’s nothing. I mean, besides the food, the only other thing I had was water–”

“Tested. And if it was that, we’d all be sick,” Kyle answered.

“The acetaminophen,” she said.

“Have you taken it over the past few days?”

Julia shook her head, making it thud again. “No. The first time I took it was when I had the fever.”