She Tried to Poison Me novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Nine Years Ago
Seth was splitting kindling behind the boathouse when I walked down the hill.
He saw my face and put the axe down.
"She told you," he said.
"She told me you stood over your father with a teacup in your hand."
"I did."
"She said you burned papers. And that you kept something."
He didn't answer.
He walked past me into the boathouse, knelt beside his bed, and pulled up a loose floorboard.
Under it lay a flat metal tin, the kind that holds cookies at Christmas.
He took out a folded paper and put it in my hands.
It was a laboratory report, nine years old, with a county seal at the top.
Patient: Kessling, male, age sixty-one. Cause under investigation.
The lab had tested a sample of his blood and a teacup residue.
The result sat in bold near the bottom.
Thallium, toxic levels, consistent with repeated exposure over several weeks.
I read it twice.
My hands had gone cold.
"Your father," I said.
"The same thing. The same smell on the tea, though I was too young to know it. I found him on the kitchen floor on a Tuesday morning. I picked up his cup, because I thought he'd dropped it."
"And your mother told the police that was you."
"She told them I'd been arguing with him about money."
"She said I made his tea every night, and I did, because Dad liked it with honey and lemon."
His voice cracked.
"She had the death certificate changed to heart failure."
"But the county lab sent this to the house by mistake, and I took it the night they threw me out."
"Why didn't you go to the police?"
"Because I'd already been the one with the cup. Because she's Fern Kessling and I was a drunk with a grudge. Because I had one piece of paper and no one to hand it to."
Keep reading free with an account. Start She Tried to Poison Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend