Luckily, I caught it in time. I dumped the soup before it could be served, averting a mass poisoning.
But word of her incompetence spread. Students and staff mocked her, whispering whenever she passed.
Unable to handle the gossip, the fragile "child" left a suicide note for my husband and jumped off a building.
My husband, Dominic Henson, read the note in silence. He handled her funeral without shedding a tear or speaking a word.
I thought he was grieving in his own way.
I was wrong.
On the seventh day after her death—the day her spirit was said to return—he tied me to a chair.
He cooked a pot of mushroom soup large enough for ten people and forced it down my throat.
He didn't stop until my stomach ruptured.
I was stuffed to death, drowning in agony.
Dominic cradled her urn in one arm and downed a bottle of poison with the other.
"Mushrooms don't kill people," he sneered, his eyes cold and dead. "If you hadn't been so nosy, Caroline wouldn't have died."
He stroked the urn. "She was pregnant with my child. My flesh and blood. Because of you, I have nothing left. I'm going down there to find her."
My vision blackened. Consciousness slipped away. His low, hateful murmur was the last thing I heard.