And Then There Was Tea
The china was always pristine, delicately placed away and rarely ever used unless somebody important was coming over. But today she had set it out. Jack Forester looked at the sweetness of the blanket with elegant tea coverings and a card left just for him.
He shook his head. She was always spelling things wrong, always using the wrong words. He could only assume she meant Drink and Be Merry.
He tossed the card on the floor. His wife surely was getting into some strange cultural shifts lately. He would only guess tea on the floor was her way of doing some kind of Asian thing. Oh no, he couldn’t say that. She was a PC kind of woman who didn’t like anything that seemed off putting to anybody. While he believed in a lot of stereotypes she didn’t believe in any of them.
“Judge a person not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” she would always say putting her own flare to Dr. King’s words. Yeah, maybe there was some truth to that but he had seen a lot of true stereotypes…enough to know she broke the mold. As crazy as she was he loved her still. He was sure he loved her, but he sometimes needed a little more. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her at all.
Jack sat down on the floor and picked up the decanter. He poured the steaming water into his china cup with the far too triangular tea bag in it. He hoped this stuff didn’t cost a lot of money. By God couldn’t she just use a regular tea bag? Not that they were hurting for money or anything like that, but spending it on things they didn’t need wasn’t worth losing even a penny over.
He smelled the hint of orange and hibiscus. Well he would admit it smelled good to him. He put four of the cubes of sugar she had left there into the cup, stirred just enough to let it caress the waters, and then he took a sip.
Hmm, that was good, he thought as he continued to sip his tea. Maybe he should bring her a rose home or something. There was a bush just outside his office and he was sure his employer wouldn’t miss just one rose if he took it from the back of the perfectly shaped bush. Yes, he could do that he thought as he set his empty tea cup back down on the floor.
His eyes felt heavy. His pulse felt as if it were beating wildly.
She walked into the room; he didn’t even know she was home.
“So nice to see you drank my tea.” She moved the cup away from him. “I can’t have you breaking this,” she shook her head. “This china is older than me.”
His hand clutched his chest as if he was trying to pull out a knife stabbing through his veins.
“You should thank Mr. Sato. He brought some magical herbs back with him from his trip to South America. Very untraceable, very effective. You didn’t think I wouldn’t find out did you? You didn’t think I wouldn’t find her lipstick on your shirt collar? You had to know I would.”
He felt his chest squeezing, his breath hitching.
“To death us do part; I found out that’s the correct way the sentence should go. Mr. Sato told me that. He also told me since you had already parted on the contract we had that it was only fair to finalize things. To death us do part, Jack.” She stood over him and watched him as he fell backwards, as his eyes drifted shut. He would swear the last thing he heard was a voice. It was the voice of a man who had made him work so many late nights with his mistress—the voice of the man who had sent him to his grave. Mr. Lee Sato—the deal closer who had taken down major corporations across the global market had just closed another deal—death to Jack Forester, freedom to the Belle who had once so many years ago become his wife and now had become his widow.
Copyright © 2015 Capri Montgomery
Will I garden today? I don’t think so. I have done my makeup and my hair and put on my favorite of my jumpers (my only jumper by the way) and with my heels ready to go walking there is no way I’m getting in the dirt in this outfit. However, I did get some pictures of the roses in bloom yesterday and the day before that I realized all the bell peppers seem to be doing okay and are surviving the last of winter so I’m happy with the garden…but…
I kind of want to add another flower to the front yard so while I am off taking care of business I am going to see what bulbs I might want to plant in that there garden one day. On the other hand I should probably just plant a yard of bell peppers seeing as thought I use them a lot.
Lately I have been wondering why people try to insult and shame people into submission by comparing them to weeds. One thing I have noticed is that when everything else dies the weeds just either survive or come back stronger. Nothing seems to totally destroy them. I don’t see how being compared to one as if that means the person is weak and going to die because they’re two steps removed from glory is really fitting. On the other hand, if they’re as annoying to people as weeds are to gardeners then that’s a really bad thing.