She Tried to Poison Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
Kit hands Emme a birthday champagne that smells like pennies, Seth whispers not to drink it, and Emme pours it into a water bottle in front of sixty guests and walks out. In Seth's truck he shows a photo of Kit pouring a vial into her tea.
At my thirtieth birthday party, sixty people watched my best friend hand me a glass of champagne.
My mother-in-law stood three feet away with her phone raised, filming the toast.
"Make a wish, Em," Kit said.
She was smiling the way she had smiled at me since we were twelve.
"No ice," she said. "Just how you like it."
I had told her once, years ago, that ice made champagne taste watered down.
She remembered everything about me.
My husband, Nolan, stood on my other side with his hand warm on the small of my back.
"Happy birthday, babe," he said. "You've been so tired lately. Tonight you just relax."
I had been tired for eleven months.
My fingertips had gone numb in the spring.
Last week I had pulled a clump of hair out of my brush and held it over the sink.
Nolan had said it was stress.
Kit had said it was stress too, and then she had made me a cup of tea.
I lifted the glass.
Somebody on the lawn clapped.
Then someone said my name very quietly, right behind my shoulder.
"Emme. Don't drink it."
I turned my head.
The man standing there was taller than I remembered from the one photograph I had ever seen of him.
He had a dark beard now, and grey eyes, and a plain work shirt that didn't belong at a party on this lawn.
Seth Kessling.
My husband's older brother, who nobody was allowed to mention.
Nolan's hand went stiff on my back.
"Seth," he said. "What are you doing here?"
Seth didn't look at him.
He looked at the glass in my hand.
I looked at it too.
The champagne was perfectly clear.
But up close it had a faint smell under the sweetness, flat and metallic.
It smelled like old pennies.
I had worked nights in an emergency room for six years, and I knew that smell from a poisoning training I'd sat through.
My stomach went cold.
"Kit," I said lightly. "Have a sip with me."
Kit laughed.
"I'm driving, Em."
"It's one sip."
"I really can't."
Her eyes slid to the glass and away.
It was less than a second.
I would have missed it a year ago.
"Drink, babe," Nolan said.
His voice was gentle, and he was still smiling.
"Everybody's waiting."
"You first, then," I said, and held the glass out to him.
Nolan looked at it.
He didn't take it.
Behind us the whole lawn had gone quiet.
My mother-in-law, Fern, lowered her phone an inch and then raised it again.
"Emme, don't be dramatic," she said. "It's your party."
Nobody said anything else.
Nobody reached for the glass.
Seth stood without moving, and I understood he wasn't going to say another word unless I asked him to.
I made my choice standing right there.
I walked to the drinks table and took an empty water bottle out of the cooler.
I poured the champagne into it, every drop, while sixty people watched.
I screwed the cap on tight.
"Em," Kit said, and her voice cracked in exactly the right place. "What are you doing? You're scaring everyone."
"I'm going to get this tested," I said.
Nolan caught my arm.
"Give me the bottle."
"No."
"Emme." He was still using the soft voice. "You've been unwell. Everybody here has seen it. Let me take that and we'll go inside."
I looked at his hand on my arm.
I looked at Fern's phone, still filming.
I looked at Kit, who had begun to cry.
So I stepped out.
I pulled my arm free, and I walked across the lawn with the bottle held against my chest.
Nobody stopped me.
Seth fell into step beside me without a word.
His truck was parked on the gravel past the boathouse road, an old green pickup with one dented door.
He opened the passenger side and I climbed in with my party dress bunched around my knees.
He got in behind the wheel and locked the doors.
Through the windshield I could see Nolan standing at the edge of the lawn, watching us.
"Start the truck," I said.
"In a second."
Seth pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket.
His hands were big and scarred across the knuckles, and they weren't quite steady.
"I need you to look at something first," he said. "And I need you not to scream."
He turned the screen toward me.
It was a night photo, grainy and green.
It showed the window of my own kitchen from the outside.
Kit stood at my counter in her pajamas.
She was holding a small brown glass vial over my teacup and tipping it, drop by drop.
The date stamped in the corner was three weeks ago.
My whole body went still.
"I've got four months of these," Seth said quietly. "Drive with me, Emme. Please."
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