The Phoenix's Rebirth for Revenge novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Gran's Tea
Reborn at 22 in the middle of Gran's 80th birthday dinner, Coralie refuses to carry the tea her adopted sister poisoned, takes the slap, and saves what's left in the cup, and Gran tells her Sabine has brought that tea every night for a month.
The last thing I remembered was the cellar floor, cold against my cheek, and the smell of gardenias through the crack under the door.
The next thing was a teacup.
It was warm, and it was in my hands, and my sister was smiling at me over it.
"You take it to her," Sabine said. "You're the nurse."
I knew that cup.
Blue and white, a chip on the rim near the handle, Gran's favorite.
I knew that dining room too.
The long table under the chandelier, the white roses, the gold balloons that spelled out 80 over the sideboard.
Thirty guests in summer silk were singing the last line of "Happy Birthday."
At the head of the table, my grandmother blew out one candle and called the rest of them a fire hazard.
Everyone laughed.
I looked down at my hands.
No laundromat burns.
No cracked knuckles.
The nails were painted pink, the way I'd done them the morning of Gran's party, the year I turned twenty-two.
Ten years ago.
"Coralie," Sabine said, softer. "It's getting cold."
The last time, I had carried that cup down the table.
I had set it in front of Gran and kissed her cheek.
Four days later she was dead, and my name was on the pill box, and my mother was telling a detective I'd always been careless.
Ten years after that, I was lying at the bottom of the cellar stairs with my leg bent wrong, listening to the key turn.
My hands were shaking so hard the tea slopped into the saucer.
Sabine's smile didn't move.
But her eyes went to the cup and stayed there.
I put it down on the table, hard.
"No," I said.
The singing had stopped.
My mother turned in her chair at the far end, pearls catching the light.
"Coralie, don't be strange tonight."
I didn't look at her.
I looked at Gran.
"Gran, don't drink anything Sabine gives you."
The room went quiet the way a room does when somebody drops a glass.
Except nobody had dropped anything.
"Ask her what she put in it," I said.
Sabine's face crumpled so fast it was almost beautiful.
"I put honey in it," she whispered. "Two spoons. The way Gran likes."
My father pushed his chair back. "That's enough."
"It isn't honey that makes your heart slow down," I said.
My mother crossed the room.
She slapped me in front of everyone.
My cheek burned.
I didn't put my hand up to it.
"You are jealous of your sister," my mother said, in her soft, reasonable voice. "You have been jealous since the day we brought her home. And you'll apologize."
"I won't."
My father was red to the ears. "Sabine has done nothing but love this family."
Behind me somebody murmured that the real daughter had always been difficult.
The last time, I would have cried.
I would have apologized to Sabine in front of everyone, and carried the tea.
Sabine picked up the cup.
"If it makes Coralie feel better," she said, her voice wobbling, "I'll drink it myself."
She took a small sip.
Then another, smaller.
She set it down and wiped her eyes, and two of my mother's friends actually clapped.
A sip.
She knew exactly how much a sip was.
I picked up my water bottle from my chair, unscrewed it and poured the water into the roses.
My mother reached for the teacup.
I got there first.
I tipped the tea into the empty bottle, every drop, and screwed the lid on tight.
"Give me that," my mother said.
"It's going to a lab."
"You are humiliating your grandmother on her birthday."
"I'm keeping her alive for her next one."
Somebody laughed, nervous, and stopped.
My father came around the table.
"Coralie. Put it down and go upstairs."
I held the bottle against my chest.
Sabine was crying into my mother's shoulder now, and over that shoulder she was watching me.
There was nothing in her face at all.
Then a cane cracked against the floorboards.
Gran had stood up.
She was eighty years old and five feet tall, and every person in that room shut up.
"Quentin, sit down," she said to my father.
He sat.
She came down the length of the table, slowly, past the roses and the balloons, and stopped in front of me.
I thought she was going to tell me to apologize.
Her fingers closed around my wrist, cold and very strong.
She leaned close, so only I could hear.
"Sabine," Gran said, "has brought my tea every night for a month."
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