“He wasn’t trying to end her life,” Cordell said slowly, the shape of it turning his stomach.

“He was manufacturing a catastrophe.”

“Manufacturing it,” Ramsey agreed, “and addressing it to the wrong person.

The plan was for Livia to fall gravely ill on paper during Pilar’s time, or just after it — and then for Fenwick, the concerned doctor father, to stand up in family court and say the mother had left something dangerous within reach of the children.

He was going to frame her for poisoning their own daughter.

Win the crisis, win the sympathy, win the custody.