My Mother-in-law Tried To Poison My Chowder. I’m A Pharmacist, So I Knew Exactly What She Added. I Sent The “gift” To My Cheating Husband Instead.

Facing Betty

One evening as I was helping my mother with the dishes, my phone rang.

It was an unknown number.

I hesitated for a second then answered.

“Is this Laura Collins?”

The man’s voice was a bit hoarse.

“I’m the court-appointed lawyer for Betty Collins,”.

My hands froze, splashing water out of the sink.

“How can I help you?”

“Mrs. Collins would like to see you. She’s asking for your permission,”.

I fell silent.

My mother standing beside me overheard and looked at me with worry.

I covered the phone’s receiver.

“Mom, I’m just going to step outside for this,”.

I walked out onto the porch.

The sky was dark, the wind light.

“Please continue,” I said into the phone.

The lawyer lowered his voice.

“She’s in a state of panic. She says she just wants to see you one time to ask for your forgiveness and to ask you to put in a good word for her,”.

I closed my eyes.

The image of Betty collapsed in the hospital hallway, her eyes filled with despair, flashed in my mind.

I didn’t hate her enough to wish her dead in prison, but I also couldn’t pretend nothing had happened.

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“But I can’t make any promises,”.

After that call I couldn’t sleep.

I lay staring at the ceiling thinking about the word forgiveness.

People say you forgive to lighten your own heart.

But I wondered, if I forgave too soon, would it be a betrayal of myself?

Two days later I decided to go see Betty.

The detention center was on the outskirts of the city, the atmosphere heavy and oppressive.

When I walked into the visitation room, Betty was already sitting on the other side of the glass partition.

She had lost a lot of weight.

Her hair was noticeably grayer and the critical look in her eyes was gone, replaced only by fear and exhaustion.

When she saw me she started to cry silently.

“Laura, you came,”.

I picked up the internal phone, my voice calm.

“You asked to see me. What is it?”

Betty trembled.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t dare hope for you to forgive me. I just want you to understand. Nathan manipulated me. I was a fool,”.

My heart sank but I didn’t soften.

“Do you remember that night when you were sprinkling the powder into the chowder? What were you thinking then?”

Betty bowed her head, her shoulders shaking.

“I thought… I thought you would just get a stomach ache, go to the hospital, and then get a divorce. I never thought about death,”.

I nodded slowly.

“But did you ever think about what would happen to my parents if the person who died was me?”

Betty choked on a sob.

She couldn’t answer.

I continued.

“I didn’t come here to yell at you. I didn’t come here to ask for a reduced sentence. I came here to tell you that I survived. But some wounds don’t heal just because you survive,”.

Betty looked up.

Her face streaked with tears.

“Laura, I know I deserve this,”.

I looked at her for a long time then spoke slowly.

“I will not lie to the investigators. I will not ask for leniency by distorting the truth. But I will not add anything either. I will only state exactly what happened,”.

Betty nodded repeatedly like a drowning person clinging to a piece of wood.

“That’s enough for me. That’s enough,”.

The visit ended.

As I stood up to leave, Betty called after me.

“Laura, if there’s a next life, I hope we can be strangers,”.

I turned back and said softly, “In this life we should probably learn to be strangers to each other too,”.