I'd had three boyfriends in total, and every single one of them dropped dead after eating my mother's dumplings.
The authorities assembled a special task force just to investigate their deaths. They spent six solid months tearing my home apart, turning every corner inside out, and still couldn't find a single shred of evidence.
The whole ordeal left me too terrified to date anyone for two full years.
In the third year, I finally crawled out from under that shadow and started seeing someone new.
But after losing three boyfriends, the fear never really left me. I didn't dare bring my new boyfriend, Richard Finch, home to meet my mother.
He was the one who kept pushing for it. He wanted to talk marriage, kept insisting, wore me down day after day until I finally agreed to take him home.
This time, following our family's tradition, my mother made dumplings again.
We'd barely finished eating when I stepped away to use the bathroom. That's when I heard my mother scream.
"No! Not again!"
I ran out and the color drained from my face.
Richard, who had been perfectly fine just minutes ago, sat rigid on the couch. His body was stiff. His skin was cold.
He looked like he'd been dead for a while.
——
I stood frozen in place, staring blankly at Richard's lifeless body slumped on the sofa. My face went white, and my eyes burned with tears.
"How... how is this possible?"
"Richard, wake up! Please, don't do this to me!"
My hands shook as I reached toward his nose to check for breath, but my mother grabbed my wrist and pulled me back.
"Debbie, what are we going to do? Your boyfriend is dead again!"
"We need to call the police. Right now."
My mother was the most timid, law-abiding woman alive. Her only instinct when something went wrong was to call the authorities.
She dialed with a chalk-white face. "They said they'll be here soon!"
"Debbie, stop looking at him."
I sank onto the couch, hollow and numb.
"How could this happen again?"
"Mom, that's the fourth one..."
My mother looked at me with pity, sighing heavily. She seemed to have aged a decade overnight.
Before long, the special task force arrived with a team of forensic examiners and surrounded the apartment. Chief Finch took one look at me and my mother and let out a long, weary sigh.
"How is it your place again?"
"What happened this time?"
My mother shook her head frantically. "Officer, we don't know. We just don't know."
They secured the body on the spot and began a full autopsy examination. My mother and I sat by the front door in silence, waiting.
This was the fourth time.
Even the task force and the forensic team felt like old acquaintances by now.
During a break, one of the medical examiners leaned in close and whispered to us.
"Mrs. Henson, you don't think it could be the house itself? Bad energy or something?"
"Every time your daughter brings a boyfriend home, someone dies. It's like a curse. Terrible luck."
"If it were me, I'd sell this place and move somewhere else."
My mother pressed her lips into a tight line, her face pale as she shook her head.
"It's just the two of us. Debbie's father died young. This place is all we have. Where would we even go?"
As she spoke, tears slid down her cheeks.
"I just feel sorry for my Debbie. She finally had something stable with a boyfriend, and now... this." She trailed off with a broken sigh.
A boyfriend had died in our home. That made my mother and me the prime suspects.
The neighbors gathered around, shooting us dirty looks.
"Another death. There's got to be something going on with that family. It's unnatural."
"I bet those two did it. The mother and the daughter."
"Oh, stop talking nonsense. The best task force in the city is standing right there. If those two were really the killers, they would've been arrested after the first boyfriend died."
"There has to be more to this story."
Hearing everyone whispering, gossiping, pointing fingers, dragging my mother and me through the mud—
