She Tried to Poison Me novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: You First

I came down the steps of the stage with the dead man's recorder still warm in my hand.

The sheriff was walking Fern toward the gravel drive.

She didn't struggle.

She held her chin high and looked at no one, and the crowd opened in front of her without a sound.

Nolan stood at the front table with the champagne held up in the air.

His smile had begun to look painted on.

"Emme," he said gently. "You've had a terrible shock. Have a little of this."

I stopped in front of him.

I looked at the glass.

It was perfectly clear, with bubbles climbing up the side.

"You first," I said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You said everybody's waiting. So drink."

Nolan laughed.

"It's champagne, Em."

"Then it won't hurt you."

Three hundred people were watching.

Nolan's hand didn't move.

"I don't drink in the afternoon," he said.

"You drank at every party," said a voice from the crowd.

It was the neighbor from two doors down.

She stepped forward holding her phone in both hands.

"I filmed your wife's birthday, Nolan," she said. "The whole toast."

"I never put it online, because Fern's version went up first."

"By then everybody had decided what they'd seen."

"I want you all to see what I saw."

A young man from the lodge's staff had already picked up the cable for the big screen.

It was the one that ran the family slideshow.

He plugged her phone into it.

The screen above the stage flickered.

It showed this lawn on a summer evening, and a woman holding up a glass.

It was me.

On the screen, my arm stayed out, and Nolan's hands stayed empty.

The camera stayed on his face for ten seconds.

It showed the moment his smile went slack, and his eyes slid to Kit, and then to his mother's phone.

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