My Husband and My Mother Poisoned Us and Put Us in the Ground. They Forgot One Thing: I Woke Up First

“Oh, no, darling.

This is your special day.

You eat up.”

She cut the cake herself, and she handed each of the boys a thick slice heavy with dark chocolate.

She handed one to me as well, her hands perfectly steady, steadier than any grandmother’s hands have a right to be at her grandsons’ birthday.

I have thought about those steady hands more than almost anything since.

A person whose hands do not shake while she serves poisoned cake to two children she has known since birth is a person who has traveled somewhere the rest of us cannot follow, somewhere past feeling entirely.