On our wedding anniversary, my spouse raised his glass with a serious smile. I did the same thing, but shortly before the toast, I saw something that made my skin crawl: he had put something in my drink. I felt like I should flee. I didn’t wait to see what it was. I quietly exchanged my glass with his sister’s while everyone else was busy for a moment.
We all raised our glasses and drank ten minutes later. A few minutes later, she fell. People got scared. People yelled and ran to help. My spouse looked shocked, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened.
He said, “She wasn’t supposed to drink!” I switched the glasses!
That’s when it hit me. I was right. That drink was for me. My partner had planned to kill me.
I didn’t say anything. I arrived home and sat down, barely able to breathe. Later, he came in and acted like everything was fine.
He asked, “How do you feel?” with a phony smile.
I said, “I’m fine,” and my voice didn’t shake. “You?”
He wasn’t sure. I could tell he knew I knew by the look in his eyes. He could tell that things had changed.
I went to the hospital the next day to see his sister. Still alive, but pale and weak. The doctors said it was a really bad case of poisoning. She wouldn’t have made it if she had taken a little more. I silently praised fate and my own gut.
He said hi to me in a casual way when I got home that night. “How is she?”
“I am alive,” I said. “And I remember that the glasses were not where they should have been.”
He stopped moving. His hands were shaking.
“What does that mean?”
“Not a thing.” But. Just something to keep in mind, especially if I call the police.
That night, he didn’t sleep at all. But I didn’t stop trying. I began to collect everything, such as phone records, receipts for drugs, and screenshots of texts. I needed proof.
The days passed. He treated me like I was still his “perfect wife.” I went along with it, made dinner, and smiled and nodded. But I was making a case for myself.
Then I found it. The message came from a number I didn’t know. “Everything ends after the anniversary,” my husband had remarked.
One night, while we were seated by the fire, he raised a glass. He said, “To us.”
I said “To us,” but I didn’t touch mine.
AHEM! Someone knocked on the door. binds. I got up and let them in. A detective and a plainclothes officer stepped forward.
“Citizen Orlov, you are under arrest for trying to kill someone.”
He stared me in the eyes. “You set me up?”
“No,” I answered in a chilly voice. “You did that to yourself.” I just made it.
Things got back to normal two months later. There was a lot of evidence against him. His lawyer couldn’t do anything. He was in a detention facility waiting for his trial.
Then I got a phone call. “He wants to see you.” He says he will only talk to you.
I thought about it. But curiosity won out.
When I walked into the room, he leaned in and whispered, “You’ve got it all wrong.” It wasn’t meant for you.
I felt ice running through my veins. “What?”
“It was her.” My sister. She had too much knowledge. “She was blackmailing me.”
I responded quietly, “You’re lying.”
“Look at her phone,” he urged. “Find out who she was talking to. We’ll talk about it then.
I left in a daze and headed home. I found the tablet that she used to own. There were saved messages, voice notes, and records of calls inside. There were talks with someone whose name was merely “M.O.” The message that terrified me the most was, “We’ll have to plan an accident if she doesn’t leave on her own.”
Things shifted in my world again. She was not a kind person. She had been looking. Playing with. Planning ahead.
Not only one side was betrayed. But at least I know what’s true now. And I had made it through.