3: 3
Under the officers' questioning, all they could do was dig in and keep up the act.
Barret held to his story that his stomach hurt and demanded to be taken to the hospital for tests.
His classmates, Horace and Yvette, swore up and down that I was the one who'd given him the cake.
Right there, I asked the police to pull the restaurant's security footage.
"Officers, I never wanted to cut him a slice in the first place. Horace was the one who forced me into it."
"And I never handed it to anyone. I didn't touch that cake the entire time!"
The officer nodded.
"What's the relationship between everyone here?"
I jumped in first. "The three of us are friends. The one who got poisoned isn't supposed to know us at all."
"But he called my friend Yvette his sister."
"Right now I think the three of them set this whole thing up!"
"You're smearing me with lies!" Yvette shot back.
The officer they called Captain Sanders raised his voice.
"Enough. Stop the shouting. Get the suspected poisoning victim to the hospital for tests first."
"Send the cake to the lab for analysis."
"Everyone else comes down to the station and waits!"
In the mediation room, I sat on one side. Horace and Yvette sat on the other, holding tightly to each other's hands.
I wasn't hurt. I just felt like I'd been blind all this time.
I'd met Horace and Yvette back in college.
Yvette's family didn't have money, and yet she carried herself with so much pride that no one in the dorm wanted anything to do with her.
So I brought her along wherever I went.
Her interview résumé, I helped her write it, line by line.
Her spoken English was weak, so I practiced with her, day after day, night after night.
Even later, when the two of us became interns together.
Her proposals were polished by me too, one word at a time.
At first, Horace felt sorry for me.
"Are you raising a kid? You do every little thing for her yourself."
Then, somewhere along the way, it became him taking Yvette along no matter what he was doing.
"She's got no friends. It's kind of sad, being alone like that."
"We're driving anyway. What difference does one more person make?"
It bothered me, at the time.
He dragged Yvette over to smooth it over.
"I chewed him out for it! I know he's trying to win points with his little future mother-in-law, but he shouldn't be shortchanging his girlfriend for it!"
"From now on, when you two want your alone time, leave me out of it! I don't feel like watching you two be all lovey-dovey anyway!"
And after that, she really did stop coming.
But Horace only got busier and busier.
I thought he was working hard for the permanent slot.
It wasn't until I had someone look into it that I found out the two of them had gone off for that alone time of their own.
Seeing me watching them.
Horace let go of Yvette's hand.
He came over and sat down beside me.
"Pauline, you've really gone too far this time. You scared Yvette."
Ha.
His heart had drifted clear across the Pacific.
I asked, "Horace, who exactly is your girlfriend?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose, impatient.
"Here we go again. That's the only thing in your head, isn't it?"
"There's nothing going on between me and Yvette. Stop with the paranoid suspicions."
Nothing going on?
I opened my bag, pulled out a stack of paper, and threw it in his face.
Photos of them kissing at the top of the Ferris wheel.
Their backs as they walked hand in hand into a hotel.
Tens of thousands of chat messages, the two of them pouring their hearts out to each other.
I slapped him across the face and asked, "Is this your fucking nothing going on?"
"Horace, I told you. If you fell for someone else, all you had to do was say one word to me, and I'd never have made trouble over it."
"Too bad you didn't have the guts."
The words he wanted to say to explain had just reached his lips.
The next second, the officer who'd taken the sample to the lab pushed the door open.
"Captain, the results are in!"
"There really was poison in the cake sample, and Barret really was poisoned!"
