”The story’s out in the papers. You can’t escape it. The children will hear it in school,” Sigrid told her brother. 

“Now what are we going to do?”

“Take them out of school,” he said. “I’ll tell them. I should have told them long ago.”

So the children were taken out of school, and there they all sat, at the tail end of the weekend, in the parlor, a wood fire crackling in the stove, the two children shivering because it was a cold night, and it had been a long drive to get back to Willow Grove. “I have a story to tell you,” Peter said. 

Oh, good, the children thought. We like stories. 

The names of the children were Sophie and Andrew. 

Excerpted from Poison © Copyright 2012 by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Reprinted with permission by W. W. Norton. All rights reserved.