Arsenic in the Azaleas by Dale Mayer

Author:Dale Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Cozy, Mystery
ISBN: 9781773361079
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Published: 2019-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Day 3, Friday

The following morning she quickly made herself some toast and jam to go with her coffee. She walked out the door twenty minutes later.

She wanted to get to Nan first thing. Leaving Goliath sitting on the front railing, completely disinterested in where they were walking, Doreen led the way to Nan’s retirement home apartment, Thaddeus riding on her shoulder and Mugs strolling at her side.

With still a block to go, she grabbed her phone and called her grandmother. “Nan, you there?”

“Of course I am, dear,” she said in a gentle tone full of exasperation. “Where else would I be?”

“We’re walking toward you. We’re a couple minutes away,” Doreen said with a big smile. It was so hard to believe Nan would be mixed up in anything like murder. She just couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

“Oh, that’s delightful. I just made a full pot of tea. I must’ve known company was coming.”

Doreen laughed. “You’re a psychic now?”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely if I were?”

Doreen shook her head and ended the call, pocketing her phone. She wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of the photos. Nan’s life was so very different than Doreen’s had been. But anybody who had lived as many years as Nan had must see life from a whole different perspective.

Just look at me. In the last six months, everything had changed for her. Imagine if she had survived what Nan had gone through. She’d been married a long time ago, had a son, only to have her husband die soon after. When Nan had married again, her second husband died as well. Then she had decided marriage wasn’t for her and had traveled the world. Sure, her son had been Doreen’s father. But her parents split up when Doreen was little, her father dying soon after. Yet Doreen’s mom had been friends with Nan before she had married Nan’s son, and their friendship had continued afterward for Doreen’s sake.

Doreen, as a child, had spent a lot of time with Nan. Doreen’s mother wasn’t the maternal type but enjoyed living a single’s tennis-club life. She’d remarried twice since then and had distanced herself a little more each time from her motherhood role, but that was okay because Nan took over, being a true mother to Doreen. When Doreen had gone off on her own, she’d missed Nan.

But, as Doreen had built a life with her husband, it became easier and easier for her to acclimate to her mother’s lifestyle. Her new life quickly filled with new people, new experiences—as her husband’s ever-increasing control of Doreen’s world worked to separate her from everything and everyone from her past, except for those things and people he knew and wanted in her life.

She didn’t blame him entirely. She’d been young and naive and so wanting to please. But, over time, her previous life and the people in it had drifted farther away.

Now there was no need to let go. Doreen needed somebody. Nan needed somebody. And they were gravitating toward each other again.

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