For several minutes I stood there staring at the page while the kitchen clock ticked loudly behind me. My mind insisted there must be some mistake because my grandmother had been sick recently and everyone assumed her death had been a sad but natural ending. Yet the rest of the letter described her growing fear, her suspicion that someone had been tampering with her tea, and a set of instructions that led me toward a locked cabinet in the study.
Inside that cabinet I discovered notebooks filled with careful observations, receipts from an independent laboratory test, and a small flash drive containing security footage from a camera my grandmother secretly installed in the kitchen. When I finally played the video on my laptop, the screen showed Monica standing at the counter late at night, quietly pouring a fine white powder into the teapot before sealing the lid again.
I remember whispering into the empty room, “This cannot be real.”
My brother Caleb appeared in the doorway moments later because he heard my voice. “Brooke, what are you talking about?”