His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 22 of 48

Chapter 22: The Chemistry Set

Kit came to Pittsburgh on the first Saturday in June.

Royce drove him up from Lexington and parked a dusty pickup truck outside the warehouse.

He wasn't in uniform.

I had never once, in eight years, seen him in a T-shirt in public.

He looked like somebody's dad.

Kit climbed out of the truck in a polo shirt buttoned to the neck, carrying a spiral notebook.

He had grown two inches since November.

"Ms. Sayle," he said, and held out his hand to shake.

"Lenora," I said. "Or Len. Ms. Sayle is for judges."

He thought about it.

"Len," he decided.

Posy came down the iron staircase two steps at a time and stopped in front of him with her arms crossed.

She was a head taller than him and twice as loud.

"You're Kit," she said. "I'm Posy. I'm head of social media. Are you the one who knows about the Victorian wallpaper?"

Kit's ears went red.

"Arsenic green," he said. "Scheele's green. People got sick from their walls."

"Cool. That's so creepy. Do you want to see the centrifuge? It's the loudest thing in the building."

She grabbed his sleeve and towed him off before he could answer.

Royce watched them go.

"He's been talking about this for two months," he said. "He packed that notebook in April."

"Come in," I said. "There's coffee. It's terrible."

"I remember your coffee."

"Micah makes it now. It's worse."

We spent the whole morning in the lab.

I gave Kit a white coat that came down to his ankles and a pair of safety glasses that kept sliding off his nose.

Posy rolled the sleeves up for him without being asked.

I showed him how a cartridge worked.

How you add the sample.

How you wait.

How you never trust one reading, you run it again.

He wrote everything down in his notebook in square, careful letters.

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