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stung all over, neck, chest, back, even his legs. The medics are running him to Memorial. You have any idea what caused this?” He gestured around himself at the dead trees and the dead roses and the dead junipers.
    “No,” she said, truly baffled. “That is, I’m not sure. Jared used some weed killer yesterday…”
    “Anybody hanging around?” Ralph asked. “Any strangers?”
    “I didn’t see any. Maybe the people you talked to, those two by the fence…”
    Ralph shook his head. “No. They saw him just before you did.”
    She turned away helplessly, seeing the weed lacily arranged against the front of the house, now almost six feet tall. As she watched, all the leaflets turned in her direction. She shook her head, telling herself she was seeing things, then got into the ambulance with Jared. Polly would bring the car, she said. The two raggedy persons watched them go.
    Jared was put into intensive care at the hospital. Ralph was replaced by another cop, one she didn’t know, and he had her tell the story at least five times while someone else queried Polly. Neither of them had anything worth telling, no matter how many times they told it. No, Jared hadn’t yet come home when she and Polly went to the mall. Yes, they could prove they’d been to the mall, they had their sales slips, their dinner check stub. They’d walked home. They’d been together all evening until they found Jared. Neither of them could possibly be suspected of anything.
    “She tried to kill him,” said Jared’s mother, from out in the hall, early the following morning. “She was responsible…that woman he married.”
    Dora, hearing this, felt anger again. She almost never got angry, and here lately it was getting to be a habit, overreacting to stuff.
    The detective said, “Dora couldn’t have, Mrs. Gerber. She and her sister were elsewhere, and we’ve checked the story. The waitress at the restaurant remembers them. It all checks out. Besides, we don’t even know how he was hurt, yet.”
    Jared’s mama made an exclamation of surprise. Dora didn’t hear her say anything else.
    The next day, when the medical tests came back, they led only to further confusion. Jared’s heart had almost failed following the injection of an herbicidal compound. He had at least a hundred different puncture wounds on his arms, face and torso. Dora cried, “The weed by the front stoop! Jared sprayed it with weed killer. And when Jared grabbed it yesterday, he said it had thorns.”
    The lab sent someone to look at the weed, but as Polly pointed out to Dora, it had no thorns. “Jared must have been stuck by something else, Dora. Maybe there were bees on the plant when he grabbed it. The plant isn’t thorny at all. It’s just…just…well, I don’t know what it is exactly. The leaves look like oak leaves, but they’re in a frond like some kind of acacia. And look at the little seed heads.”
    “I didn’t know it had seeds,” said Dora. “It’s only been there a few days.”
    “It must have bloomed some time ago,” remarked Polly. “See the little puff balls? Like tiny dandelion heads.”
    There was a frothy bubble, no bigger than a pea, an assembly of mist or spiderweb or something equally tenuous. As they watched, the wind broke the tiny sphere to send its particles flying, silken shreds glinting with an almost metallic light as they spun and twisted, borne upward and outward on the soft breeze. Now that she was looking, Dora could see other seed heads all over the vine, and the next puff of wind surrounded them with glittering floss.
    Dora sneezed. “Cut that out,” she exclaimed.
    The weed just flirted its tendrils and went on shedding seeds into the wind.
    “I’d be glad to stay with you,” said Polly, who had already extended her visit to be with Dora through all the fuss. “I don’t want you to be alone here.”
    “I’m not going to be here for long,” she said, surprising herself. “You’ve sort of focused my mind,