The (Attempted) Murder of a Pot Head - A Murder Mystery for Adult Readers

The events I am going to recount were, at the time, a local story at best. One that was quickly overshadowed by much more interesting and exciting news stories. My family wanted it this way, and I agreed to wait to tell the truth. Now that I have grown old, and those closest to those months of mystery and revelations have long since passed, I decided to set the record straight with this memoir.

So without further ado.

I can recollect the first few hours of the family reunion with great clarity, even after all these years. I can still smell the cooking of my grandma’s and auntie’s cooking, I can hear the boisterous laughter of my grandpa and uncles, and I still see the spiral of smoke from the joint my cousins and I would serepditiously pass around, convincing ourselves that the skunky smell wasn’t that noticeable.

I remember my cousins and I staying grouped most of the reunion, until the food was ready. I remember Grandma snapping that she had no help, as the food was being served buffet-style, and the drinks (lemonade, water, soda, and tea) were poured from pitchers into red Solo cups. My aunties defended themselves, pointing out that they, too, had been working away in the kitchen. Grandpa sided with his daughters, and Grandma brought up something from 30 years ago that she was still bitter about. I remember my cousins and I mumbling to each other about how Grandpa and Grandma should just get a divorce and how God would forgive them for divorcing, and they would be so much happier. Then everyone moved on from the family drama and overloaded their plate with fried chicken, macaroni & cheese, collard greens, mashed potatoes, homemade dinner rolls, ribs, corn, and peach cobbler. Just the memory of that food makes me salivate.

I had dry mouth by the time food was served, as I had participated multiple times in the ritual of puffing and passing with my cousins, and I was going through multiple cups of water as I ate. I remember my grandpa came up behind me as I ate and put one hand on my shoulder, and presented me with a cup of lemonade. I looked at the proffered cup and then at my grandpa, who smiled knowingly at me with reddened and dilated eyes. I smiled mischievously back and accepted the lemonade. A quiet moment shared between two generations of pot heads.

My memory after eating becomes a little more blurry. I remember finishing my meal and rejoining my cousins for some dancing. I remember talking to family, laughing, and joking together. It was overall a happy, jovial time with a family that was often inundated with poorly concealed bitterness and animosity. I wish I could remember the reunion more fondly, but the events that followed have given the memory a dark edge that I can never shake.

The next thing I remember after eating at the reunion is coming to with a deep breath at a large round table with the Justice League symbol on it, seated in the black and white egg chair from Men in Black, in a conference room that looked exactly like the one from The Office.

“What the fuck?” I mumbled to myself as I looked around the eclectic conference.

I was alone, until I wasn’t.

“You’re telling me.” An oddly familiar voice agreed.

Now, suddenly seated across the Justice League table from me was me! Or a corporate, serious-looking version of me. The other me had their hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun, unlike my untameable afro, and she wore a sensible button-down instead of a T-shirt with a picture of a snarling drag queen on it. She was holding a tablet, tapping away with one hand. Her eyes were fixed on it, acting as if meeting a clone of yourself was not worth a glance.

“What the fuck!?” I yelled.

Corporate Me looked up when I yelled. Locking eyes with yourself is such an odd sensation. I don’t believe I have the vocabulary to describe it, even if the words exist.

“I think we’re having a mental breakdown.” Corporate Me responded.

“No shit!” I loudly agreed, standing up as I did so.

Upon standing, I noticed this conference room wasn’t an exact match to the one in The Office because there was no door. I pointed this out to Corporate Me:

“There’s no door.”

“Yes, because we’re not really here.” She said, resuming her tapping on the tablet. “This is a mental approximation of a physical space that we created during a traumatic event.”

“What traumatic event?”

Corporate Me swiped upward, and the projector in the center of the Justice League table, the one Batman uses to show the Justice League the next big threat to humanity, displayed a first-person video of someone vomiting up blood into a toilet. I recognized my own hands gripping the rim of the toilet.

“At the reunion, we started vomiting blood and had bloody diarrhea. Uncle Frank and Grandpa rushed us to the hospital, where we are currently getting our stomach pumped.” Corporate Me had stopped looking at her table; she was now watching me as I watched myself vomit up blood in my grandma’s toilet.

“Did I get sick?” I asked.

“Poisoned.” Corporate Me answered.

“Poisoned!?”

“Arsenic poisoning, to be exact.”

“So am I in my head talking to myself because I’m dying?”

Corporate Me shook her head. “We’re not dying, but we took a lot of damage from the arsenic. Between the arsenic and the long-term marijuana use, we created this.” She gestured to the conference room, “A safe place for us to retreat to to try to figure this out.”

“Figure what out?”

“Who poisoned us.”

I stopped. I hadn’t thought of that. Or I had, but the part of me that is writing this memoir hadn’t yet. But before I could get into that, I still needed to clarify if I had gone crazy first. I counted down the events on my fingers as I listed them:

“So I was poisoned. My body started to shut down. I mentally created this place to retreat as my stomach is being pumped. And I created a more serious version of myself to talk to?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right.” Corporate Me answered.

She stayed silent as I took some deep breaths to collect myself. I wanted to thank her for being considerate, and then I thought that I was just thanking myself for being thoughtful, and that felt weird, so I just skipped to my next question:

“So someone tried to kill me? Us?” I asked as a gesture to both myself and Corporate Me.

“Looks like it. Unless there is some accidental way for us to ingest a fatal dose of arsenic.”

“But that means you think someone in my family tried to kill me!” I declared angrily.

“If I think that, that means you think that.” She responded reasonably.

Well, I couldn’t really argue with myself; I had a good point.

“We’re waking up.” Corporate Me suddenly said.

“Wha-” I said both to her and to the room I woke up in.

My voice was raspy in the world outside of my mind, and I felt fucking awful. I kept my eyes closed as I got reacquainted with my physical body. My stomach and throat felt battered from the stomach pumping. My body felt flabby, heavy, and weak.

I opened my eyes. I was in a hospital room. The sky outside the window was inky black, and the clock on the wall specified it was 3 a.m. I debated calling for a nurse, but decided to hold off. A nurse would come check on me at some point during their rounds.

So I waited, too sleepy to get up but too awake to sleep. I tried to think through what happened at the reunion, but thinking in a recently poisoned body was much more difficult than it was to think in an incorporeal mind palace. My thoughts became muddled, and all I managed to accomplish was a headache.

By noon, I was feeling better and allowed to have visitors. Everyone came by, friends, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandpa and grandma. We talked, laughed, and carefully danced around the subject of why I was in the hospital. It was obvious I wasn’t the only one who realized that if I was poisoned at the family reunion, it was one of our own.

Slowly throughout the day, people began to filter in and out. Except Grandpa. He stayed with me as long as the hospital allowed. Even as Grandma fussed at him regularly before she finally gave up and left on her own. Once she was gone and we were alone, he held my hand and became quite serious.

“The police aren’t going to investigate.” He said bluntly. Grandpa was always a rip-the-band-aid-off kind of guy.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Because of the weed.” He explained, “Weed absorbs metals in soil, metals like arsenic-”

“Oh.”

He offered to get a lawyer involved, to press for an investigation, and to get activists involved. But I declined. The police being this incompetent would normally send me into a rage regarding the blue wall of silence, police corruption, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales. But for once, the police refusing to help the people actually was helpful.

I wanted to keep this in the family.

The police did come and question me. They confirmed what my Grandpa told me. Because I was a pothead, I got arsenic poisoning from one too many blunts. They ignored the doctor, pointing out that the acute arsenic poisoning I suffered was in line with one large dose, not a chronic poisoning over time. They did no testing, no investigating, nothing. I would have been pissed if Corporate Me and I weren’t already on the case.

I was released from the hospital after just a few days. I went home, took a leave of absence from work for a couple of weeks, and took stock of my life. I wasn’t working, I was abandoned by the police, and I was pretty sure there was a murderer in my family out to get me.

I rolled up a fat one and met with Corporate Me.

I woke up in a British smoking room. I was seated on a leather couch that was more beautiful than comfortable, a Persian rug at my feet. All the furniture was rich, polished mahogany, and the walls were covered in bookcases and hunting trophies. The room smelled of whiskey and cigars.

I stood, and the movement of the clothes on my body made me look down. I was dressed like Sherlock Holmes, complete with a cape, a cap, and a wooden, curved pipe I found in the pocket of my trousers.

Corporate Me appeared across from me in a pretty but presumably uncomfortable leather chair. She wore a Hercule Poirot ensemble, an immaculate grey three-piece suit with a stiff white shirt and a bow tie.

“We have committed to investigating.” Corporate Me stated. It wasn’t a question.

I took in the smoking room where a Holmes or a Poirot would dramatically reveal the killer..

“Yeah, looks like we have,” I said.

Corporate Me nodded crisply once and suddenly had some paper and a fountain pen in her hands. She set these on a side table and looked at me expectantly.

“The doctors confirmed the arsenic was in our stomach.” Corporate Me wrote down while speaking aloud.

I put the pipe in my mouth and began to smoke. I highly recommend dream smoking, it’s all the best part of smoking without the dry mouth, bad smell, or cancer.

“True, but I should get my hair tested for chronic arsenic poisoning to eliminate all possibilities.”

“Agreed.” Corporate Me wrote this down, then hesitated. “Are we ready to start listing suspects?”

I mirrored her hesitation. Was I really ready to name names?

“The thing is,” I said hesitantly, “I don’t know who would hate me enough to try to kill me.”

“I don’t think that hate was the motive.”

Something unsaid hung in the air, something I had been ignoring that had been needling me since I first thought of it. I wanted to leave it unsaid, but another part of myself didn’t.

“Someone might have killed you for grandpa’s house,” Corporate Me said, ripping off the band-aid.

I let out a long, deep exhale now that the feasible motive had been thrown out into the open. It was the only motive that really made sense. My mother had passed away after a long struggle with addiction, and with no idea who my father is, my grandparents got custody of me after my mom died. They raised me, and when I moved out I stayed close to them to help them as they got older. It wasn’t a shock, even though there were some disgruntled rumbles and sour faces, when Grandpa let everyone know that when he died, everyone would get a little something, but I would inherit the house. The house he had bought with his wages from working at the post office for decades had once been a modest home, but after inflation, a cleaned-up neighborhood, and a devastated housing market, the house was worth almost a million dollars due to its location in a major metropolis. Getting Grandpa’s house was a hell of a motive for murder.

“Let’s wait for the lab results first,” I said.

$100 and about two weeks later, I had the results of the arsenic testing. It confirmed that I had ingested a large dose of arsenic and showed no signs of long-term arsenic poisoning. Coupled with my medical records from the ER visit, it was damning and unavoidable. I had been purposely poisoned at the family reunion. The false hope I had of some alternate explanation was dashed.

I had never rolled up a tear-stained blunt before; it was sad, a little pathetic, and a little funny. I half heartedly smoked the hallucinogen to connect with Corporate Me. I felt like I was preparing to destroy my family.

I came to and was in the kitchen from The Golden Girls. I was seated at the kitchen table in a very comfortable and brightly colored afghan, with a cheesecake centered on the table, ready to be served. It was bright and sunny outside, making the very bright kitchen even brighter.

Corporate Me walked into the kitchen through the swing doors, dressed in a comfortable but subdued afghan, making an entrance like she was Bea Arthur or Betty White, which included applause from an invisible studio audience.

Once the studio audience’s applause died down, she sat at the kitchen table with me. We didn’t speak for a while. It’s nice to talk to yourself because there are no secrets or revelations. I was sad that a member of my family was an attempted murderer, I was angry that I was the intended victim, and I needed comfort, so we were in the universe of one of my comfort shows.

“I can’t believe someone tried to kill me over a fucking house,” I said, my voice choking with tears.

Corporate Me held my hand as I cried.

I had a good, long cry in The Golden Girls kitchen. But I could only grieve the betrayal for so long before other emotions began to vie for the center spot: indignation, anger, rage. My tears began to dry, and a new energy surged through me.

“Alright,” I said, wiping the last few tears from my face with my ample afghan, “Let’s find out who tried to fucking kill us.”

The invisible studio audience raucously cheered.

Corporate Me and I were back in the British smoking room, she dressed as Poirot and I as Holmes, ready to begin our investigation into the attempted murder of yours truly. We had a green, standalone chalkboard and began to list those at the family reunion who would inherit Grandpa and Grandma’s house if I were out of the picture. I have added notes on the familial relations for the benefit of my readers:

• Aunt Patricia - Grandpa and Grandma’s oldest

• Uncle Lucius - Patricia’s husband

• Trey - Patricia and Lucius’s oldest

• Dante - Patricia and Lucius’s youngest

• Aunt Jacqueline - Grandpa and Grandma’s middle child (my late mother was their second oldest)

• Uncle Craig - Jacqueline’s husband

• James - Jacqueline and Craig’s oldest

• Phaedra - Jacqueline and Craig’s middle child

• Lawrence - Jacqueline and Craig’s youngest

• Aunt Joanne - Grandpa and Grandma’s youngest daughter

• Uncle Roy - Joanne’s husband

• Roy JR. - Joanne and Roy’s oldest

• Max - Joanne and Roy’s youngest

• Uncle Phillip - Grandpa and Grandma’s youngest child and only son

• Aunt Mary - Phillip’s ex-wife

• Candace - Phillip and Mary’s only child

We were able to eliminate my cousins from the main suspect list pretty quickly. We had stayed together the majority of the reunion, and none of them had given me anything to eat or drink that hadn’t been shared with someone else. The only way they could be involved is if multiple members of my family had conspired together to kill me, which sent a shiver down my spine, and I prayed it was just someone acting alone who had poisoned me.

“Can we narrow it down further?” Corporate Me asked as we looked at the list.

I stared at the chalkboard, thinking of each person in turn. Arsenic is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, but it can leave a metallic aftertaste in heavy quantities. I didn’t remember tasting anything metallic, but I was also stoned out of my mind with the munchies at the time. I looked at the names of my family, thinking of who had the opportunity to mix arsenic into my food or drink.

“All of the aunties were in the kitchen, so they all had an opportunity.” I began, then pointed a finger at Uncle Phillip’s name. “But out of all of them, I would think Uncle Phillip would be the one most likely to kill someone.”

Uncle Phillip, the apple of Grandma’s eye, had been doted on so much in childhood that he was now a useless and spoiled man who had hit all of his sisters at least once and his wife, my Aunt Mary, multiple times. Grandpa tried to stop his son from becoming what he was, but Grandma always excused and justified his actions, even when he hit Candace when she was still a kid. His continued acceptance at the family reunions was a huge point of contention, but Grandma would not allow her baby boy to be excluded, even though it permanently damaged her relationships with the rest of her children and grandchildren. Aunt Mary and Candace still attended the family reunion, but gave Uncle Phillip a wide berth.

“Poison doesn’t seem like his MO, though,” Corporate Me offered, interrupting my reflections on the worser parts of my family history.

“True, but he is an old man now.”

“They say poison is a woman’s weapon.”

I shrugged, “I think the only woman in the family who would actually poison someone is Grandma, but she doesn’t benefit from my death.”

“Do you think she would kill you so the house goes to Uncle Phillip?”

I hesitated before clutching my head, “Shit!”

Did my Grandma love her son enough to kill her granddaughter? The only child of the child she buried? I remember both hers and Grandpa’s grief when I showed up in the care of CPS, getting the news that their daughter was dead and their granddaughter was about to be placed in foster care if they didn’t take her in.

“No.” I shook my head. “No. Grandma may not be the easiest person to get along with, but I don’t think she would kill me. Even for Uncle Phillip.”

Corporate Me nodded her head, “Alright.” She pointed at the chalkboard, “That brings us back to the aunties.”

“Ok, let’s go down the list. Aunt Patricia?”

“She has been very vocal for years about not wanting the house.”

“Yeah, she moved the furthest away. She cut as many ties to Grandma as she could.”

Corporate Me turned and wrote ‘unlikely’ by Aunt Patricia’s name on the chalkboard. She turned back to me. “Aunt Jacqueline?”

“Hmmm…” I smoked more of my pipe in thought. “Maybe? She and Uncle Craig have always had money trouble.”

My stomach squirmed uncomfortably with the harsh but true assessment of my aunt and uncle. Corporate Me put a ‘?’ by Aunt Jacqueline’s name.

“Aunt Joanne.” I continued. “I know she felt a certain type of way about the house going to me, but she seemed to have gotten over it.”

Corporate Me wordlessly put a ‘?’ by Aunt Joanne’s name, and she went ahead and added a ‘?’ by Uncle Phillip’s name.

“So what’s next?” Corporate Me asked.

“Well, I can’t go up to them and ask them if they killed me.”

“This seems kind of like a Poirot-style case.” Corporate Me shrugged. “So what would Poirot do?”

I seriously considered what the fictional Belgian detective would do.

“I think…”I said, “I think I’ll talk to my cousins first. See if they saw or heard anything.”

“Just be careful, you are trying to figure out if their parents are murderers.”

I decided to start at the top of the list with my cousins, Trey and Dante. They live out of state, so I decided to text them. I wouldn’t be able to hear anything in their tone nor see any facial expressions, but I would get time to frame questions, and I would have a written record of what was said.

I texted Trey first:

Me: Hey, how ya doin?

Trey: I’m not the one who was poisoned! How are you?

Me: I’m doing much better!

Trey: Glad to hear!

Me: I was actually thinking about what happened. Do you remember anything weird?

Trey: I’ve honestly been wracking my brain about that. I know it wasn’t any of us because we all hung out smoking.

The ‘us’ Trey was referring to was my cousins. I thought back on the day of the reunion, and my memories lined up. It was nice to get confirmation that those I was closest to were probably innocent. I heaved a sigh of relief.

Me: Hey this is awkward, but can you think of anyone who would want to kill me?

Trey: I mean, did you piss off Grandma? Lol jk no, I honestly can’t though

We texted a bit more, but Trey didn’t know much more than I did. I reached out to Dante, and the same thing:

Dante: Trey told me you’re investigating

Me: Yeah, got any clues for me?

Dante: Nope, but if I think of something I’ll let you know.

A dead end right off the bat was discouraging, but not unexpected. Dante and Trey not knowing anything didn’t surprise me; they had stayed with the group the most to avoid the awkwardness of their mom and Grandma bitterly ignoring each other as much as possible. And they had been really, really stoned.

I summarized what I knew so far and what I could remember. The food was served buffet style, so in all likelihood, the arsenic was put in something I drank. I drank a lot of water, and I remembered having some lemonade too. So someone could have mixed arsenic into what I was drinking when I wasn’t paying attention.

As if arriving with my train of thought, my cousin Phaedra texted me.

Phaedra: Cousin, I’m really sorry about what happened to you. But it was probably an accident. You treating this like a murder investigation is just going to hurt our family, and you know our family doesn’t need more things to be angry and fight about. Grandpa and Grandma are old maybe they accidentally mixed up some rat poison somehow. I don’t think anybody in our family would seriously kill you. Please let this go, don’t do this to Grandpa.

I read Phaedra’s message multiple times. I couldn’t place my finger on it, but something needled at me about it. I cleaned my house, it needled but hid from sight. I cooked dinner, and it needled but I couldn’t name it. So I ate an edible and met up with Corporate Me.

“Why did she single out Grandpa?” Corporate Me asked immediately upon reading Phaedra’s text message.

We were back in the British smoking room in our respective private investigator garb. I stopped mid-smoke of my pipe.

“That’s it! That’s what was driving me crazy!” I snatched back the paper transcription of Phaedra’s message from Corporate Me. “Don’t do this to Grandpa. Why specifically Grandpa?”

“Maybe she meant it like, you’re Grandpa’s favorite, don’t be the one to tear the family apart?”

“Or she knows something.”

I looked at the message, and I looked at the message, and I thought back to the drinks.

“Arsenic is tasteless, but in large quantities it can leave a metallic aftertaste,” I recited to myself.

“Unless it was in a flavored drink, that would have hid the metallic taste,” She said.

“Like lemonade.” I looked at Phaedra’s message again. “And the only lemonade I drank was the glass Grandpa gave me.”

There was a pregnant pause between me and the imagined version of myself.

“But what possible motive could Grandpa have? It doesn’t make sense!” I said, rejecting the suspicious as soon as it came.

“Are you blinded by affection?” Corporate Me asked, her tone careful and gentle.

I forced myself to stop the quick denial on my lips and think. Could Grandpa kill me? The man who raised me? The man who helped me work through forgiving my late mother? The man who helped me through my rambunctious childhood years, my awkward teenage years, and then my young adulthood of trying to find myself? The man who was always there for me, no matter what, with a kind word and a joke?

“No,” I said finally.

Corporate Me nodded in acceptance. “Alright, well then, what now? It looks like the arsenic was in the lemonade, but I’m sure any physical evidence is gone by now.”

“Then we keep talking, to see who else saw something.” I held up Phaedra’s message. “She clearly saw Grandpa give me the lemonade and figured out that the arsenic must have been in that cup. But maybe somebody saw something else.”

With a plan underway, I continued talking to my cousins.

Phaedra was a no-go for questioning; she desperately wanted me to drop it. And unfortunately, this unwillingness to talk extended to her brothers, who she had convinced not to help me with my investigation. I spent the next week trying to squeeze questions about my poisoning nonchalantly into any conversations, but I was coming up empty. My investigation was stalling before it had even really started.

Worse, word had gotten out to the rest of the family about my investigation. My phone started blowing up with messages, some kind and some not so kind, accusing me of trying to destroy the family. My Uncle Phillip accused me of being a ‘crackhead like my momma’. Grandma called me daily to tell me to drop it and to stop being a fool.

I felt awful, and even my visits with Corporate Me didn’t help. We met in the kitchen of The Golden Girls, we danced in the ballrooms of Pride & Prejudice, and we walked the streets of Ankh-Morpork from Discworld. But my awesome hallucinations didn’t help me not feel like shit as my family continued to berate me.

“Are we letting this go?” Corporate Me asked as we swam in the pool from Sunset Boulevard sans Joe Gillis’s body.

Floating in a pool with everything in grayscale had turned out to be soothing and meditative. I guess a part of me had finally relaxed enough after weeks of hell to officially decide what I would do with my investigation.

“I haven’t talked to Candace,” I said by way of answer.

“And what if Candace doesn’t know anything?” Corporate Me pushed.

I’m pushing myself, I thought, the idea striking me as funny for some reason, causing me to chuckle.

“Who knows?” I shrugged.

I sure as hell didn’t.

I decided to talk to Candace in person. Mostly because I was tired of being on the phone after the harassment campaign levied against me by my family. Luckily, Candace only lived an hour away, and we met up for lunch at her house. After the initial greetings and small talk, Candace was the first to broach the subject:

“So, are you still investigating?” She asked with a nervous glance.

“Do you think I should stop?”

“No,” She said immediately.

I couldn’t help but smile, pleased to finally have some support.

“This family ignores too much, and tries to sweep too much shit under the rug.” She continued bitterly.

I winced in agreement. Her father’s abuse was ignored by the family at large in the name of peace. My own mother’s addiction had been ignored until it became impossible to do so. I looked at my cousin and wondered if our family ever thought about how much they had hurt us with their inaction.

“Do you remember anything? Anything at all?” I asked excitedly.

Candace smiled sadly, “I really wish I did.”

My hopes were dashed mid-rise. I groaned loudly and held my head in my hands.

“I’m really sorry, we were so stoned and we hung out together for most of the reunion that I didn’t see anything weird.”

Desperately, I asked her, “Do you remember anything odd? Anything out of place? Even if you think it has nothing to do with me being poisoned?”

Candace thought deeply for a moment, and I stayed quiet and made myself wait patiently for her verdict.

“Grandma gave Grandpa a cup of lemonade,” She said, finally.

My heart stopped, my stomach dropped, and a clarity I had wanted desperately now overwhelmed me.

“What?” I said aloud at the onslaught of suspicions being realigned and making a new kind of sense.

Candace thought I was still talking to her, so she elaborated: “When I went into the kitchen to get some cobbler, I saw Grandma giving Grandpa a cup of lemonade. I thought it was weird because I’ve never seen Grandma do something nice for Grandpa.”

“Oh my god,” I mumbled with wide, shocked eyes.

“What?” Candace asked, alarmed.

“I think I just cracked the case.”

I didn’t have to meet with Corporate Me; if I knew, then she knew. I sped away from Candace’s and headed straight to my grandparents. When I arrived, I then realized I had no idea how I was going to do this. Do I just go in and make an accusation? Do I elaborately reveal bit by bit my brilliance before pointing at the killer? I let myself in, and found Grandpa in the living room and heard Grandma in the kitchen.

Without preamble, I announced, “I need to talk to both of you.”

Grandpa looked at me expectantly, concern on his face. My Grandma walked in from the kitchen, and if I had doubts before, the look of absolute terror on her face confirmed my suspicions.

I stared at Grandma, she stared at me, and Grandpa looked back and forth between us.

“Did you put arsenic in Grandpa’s lemonade?” I asked Grandma.

She riled herself up in faux-indignation. “How dare you, young lady!? After all I’ve done for you!”

As Grandma rattled on, I looked at Grandpa. I could see him staring at his wife in a new light.

“You gave me that cup of lemonade,” He said quietly, but with how it cut off Grandma mid-sentence, you would think he screamed it. “I was surprised when you did.” He turned to me. “And then I gave it to you.”

We were silent. Grandma’s silence was an admission of guilt; mine and Grandpa’s silence was a moment to process what this meant.

“Go home,” Grandpa said suddenly, looking at me.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Go home.”

“But-”

He held up a hand, halting my protest. “I will handle this. Go home.”

Judge me if you like, but I didn’t put up a fight. I felt guilty leaving, but I also felt so much relief to have this truth taken out of my hands. I left, went home, and was informed the next day that my grandmother had passed away the previous night.

I never asked my Grandpa what happened after I left, and he never brought it up. As far as I know, he never told anyone what Grandma did or what happened the night she passed. Grandma was elderly, with high blood pressure and diabetes when she died. Natural causes were assumed, and no autopsy or toxicology was ever completed.

Once we buried Grandma, things began to go back to normal. The family mourned Grandma, but sadly, she was missed by only a few, like my Uncle Phillip. I ‘dropped’ my investigation as far as my family was concerned, only Grandpa and Candace knowing the truth. I talked to Candace about it once at Grandma’s funeral.

“We kept it in the family.” She told me with a shrug.

Not much more needed to be said after that.