His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 17 of 48
Chapter 17: November Sixth
The old cemetery sat on a hill above the town, with bare oaks and crooked rows of gray stones.
We parked at the bottom gate and walked up.
I could hear her before I could see her.
She was singing.
It was an old hymn, slow, with no music behind it, and her voice carried down the hill clear as a bell.
By the time we reached the top, she'd finished.
The crowd was bigger than the photo.
The old friends, a dozen townspeople, three camera crews, a reporter in a red coat holding a microphone.
Eleanor stood at the headstone with one gloved hand resting on top of it.
The stone was exactly the way I remembered it.
His parents' names at the top.
ELEANOR VARLEY, BELOVED WIFE OF ROYCE ASHWELL.
1982, and the open dash, waiting.
Kit stood beside her, staring at his shoes.
"Thank you all for coming," Eleanor said into the microphone. "Every November sixth, my husband and I come here to honor his parents. This year, he can't stand beside me."
She let her voice tremble.
"He's recovering from a poisoning. And the woman the police are looking at was once a guest in his home."
A guest.
Eight years, and I was a guest.
"I forgive her," Eleanor said. "I do. I pray for her. But I want the world to know that this family will not be broken by a jealous woman with a chemistry set."
The colonel's wife nodded along, dabbing her eyes.
The reporter in the red coat turned to her cameraman and whispered something.
Then one of the old friends turned around and saw me.
Then all of them did.
The whispering spread across the grass.
Eleanor followed their eyes and found me at the back of the crowd with Micah.
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