Bitter Brew

The tea is too sweet. Strange, since I don't recall adding sugar. The morning light filters through the kitchen window, dust motes dancing in the golden beams like memories trying to settle. I measure out two scoops of my morning blend, the leaves dark and fragrant against the pale ceramic.

"Eliot, you don't like sugar, do you?" I ask, glancing at my husband sitting in his usual chair. He shakes his head, same as he has every morning for forty-three years. The kettle whispers steam into the quiet house.

I pour two cups, the amber liquid catching the light. My phone buzzes against the counter, Sarah's face lighting up the screen. My daughter, always checking in.

"Hello?" I answer, voice honeyed with motherly affection.

"Mom, have you taken your meds?" Worry threads through her words like a dark ribbon.

"Yes, of course, dear. I'm just having tea with your father." The words come easy, natural as breathing.

"Mom..." Her voice cracks, splintering like thin ice. "Daddy isn't there. You're hallucinating again."

"Nonsense, dear. Your father is right here. Say hello, Eliot." I set the phone on the chair across from me, where Eliot sits in his cardigan, the brown one with leather patches at the elbows. The line goes dead.

"Rude, isn't it?" I scoff, shuffling back to the kitchen island. Something nags at the edges of my mind, like a loose thread threatening to unravel everything. I take a deep breath, place my glass under the tap, and drink down my medicine. The pills feel like stones in my throat.

When I turn back, the chair is empty. The room suddenly feels vast, hollow.

"Eliot?" My voice echoes in the emptiness. "Where have you gone, you silly old bat?"

I move through the house, each room darker than the last. "Eliot?!" My voice rises, bouncing off walls that seem to lean inward. "Quit hiding, your tea's getting cold!"

Then I see it. The truth I've been stepping around for days, weeks, months—who knows anymore? Time has become fluid, unreliable. There, in the study, where the afternoon light doesn't quite reach: a dark pool long dried to black, and what remains of my Eliot, his skull caved in like a broken teacup.

I never moved the body.

The memory crashes through the carefully constructed walls of my mind: the argument about his medication, his stubbornness, my rage. The heavy brass candlestick still sits on the mantel, though I've wiped it clean a hundred times in my dreams.

The walls begin to pulse with a sickly rhythm, and I sink to my knees beside what's left of my husband. The carpet has drunk deep of him, grown stiff and dark with his essence. My fingers trace patterns in the dried blood, and I remember how it felt warm and sticky that first night, how I sat beside him until the sun rose, drinking cup after cup of tea, waiting for him to stop being so dramatic and get up.

Sarah keeps calling, but I've stopped answering. She wouldn't understand about the tea parties, about how Eliot still likes his Earl Grey with just a splash of milk, no sugar. About how he forgave me that third night, when his ghost finally settled into the chair across from mine, smiling that gentle smile that made me fall in love with him in medical school.

The police will come eventually. Sarah will make sure of that. But for now, I pour another cup of tea, watching as the steam rises like spirits in the failing light. Eliot sits across from me, patient as ever, his skull knitting itself together in the shadows between moments.

"Sugar?" I ask, though I already know the answer.

He shakes his head, same as he has every morning for forty-three years, and I pretend not to notice how the movement makes pieces of him fall away, scattering like dead leaves across the carpet where his blood has written our story in dark, permanent ink.

The tea is too sweet, but I drink it anyway. It tastes of copper and regret, of love gone cold and memories that refuse to die. Outside, sirens begin to wail in the distance, their song mixing with the whispered conversations Eliot and I share in this twilight space between reality and madness.

I should run, I suppose. But where does one run from memories that wear your husband's face? Besides, Eliot would miss our morning tea, and I've already taken so much from him.

So I sit, and I pour, and I wait for the world to make sense again. The candlestick on the mantel catches the last light of day, winking at me like a co-conspirator. Eliot's blood has turned the carpet into a map of our failed forever, and I trace its borders with trembling fingers, wondering when exactly love turned to this—this dark, sweet thing that tastes of sugar I never added and forgiveness I never earned.

The sirens are closer now. Eliot smiles at me across a tea service set for two, his skull a jigsaw puzzle that will never quite fit together again. "They're coming," he says, his voice like leaves scratching against autumn windows.

"I know," I reply, reaching for the candlestick. "But first, one last cup of tea?"

The room grows darker as evening settles in, but I don't dare turn on the lights. Darkness has become my closest friend these past few weeks, hiding the worst of what I've done, softening the edges of reality until everything blurs into a gentle nightmare. The candlestick feels heavier now than it did that night, its brass surface catching what little light remains and turning it sickly yellow.

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes I remember every detail of that night—the way Eliot's reading glasses fell from his face when the candlestick connected, how his teacup shattered on impact, spilling across the carpet in a constellation of porcelain stars. Other times, it's all fog and shadow, like trying to recall a dream through the haze of morning.

Sarah called the hospital yesterday, or maybe it was last week. Time moves strangely when you're having tea with ghosts. She told them about my episodes, about how I stopped taking the medication after Eliot's heart attack three months ago. But she's wrong about that—Eliot didn't die of a heart attack. He's right here, sharing tea with me, even if pieces of him keep falling away like autumn leaves in a storm.

The candlestick catches the light again, and I remember how it felt in my hands that night. Eliot had been insisting I increase my dosage, saying my episodes were getting worse. "It's for your own good," he'd said, his voice gentle but firm, the way he used to speak to difficult patients. "You're not well, Margaret."

The irony doesn't escape me now, as I sit here in our study, the carpet beneath my feet stiff with his blood, my teacup full of memories that taste like copper and regret. I wasn't well then, and I'm certainly not well now, but at least I have these quiet moments with Eliot, these precious tea times where we can pretend that love didn't turn to violence, that concern didn't breed resentment, that a lifetime of caring for others didn't end in a moment of unforgivable rage.

The sirens are at the end of our street now. Eliot's form flickers in the gathering darkness, like a candle flame in a draft. "It's time," he says, his voice distant as echo in an empty room.

I nod, lifting my teacup in a final toast. "I did love you, you know. Even at the end."

"I know," he replies, and for a moment, I see him as he was that first day in medical school, young and brilliant and full of promise, before time and illness and my own broken mind rewrote our story in blood and regret.

Blue and red lights paint the walls now, and heavy footsteps approach the front door. I set down my teacup, noting how the dregs form a pattern like a broken skull at the bottom. Eliot is gone from his chair, but I can still taste the sweetness he leaves behind—sugar I never added to a life I couldn't save.

The door bursts open. I don't turn around.

"Would anyone care for tea?" I ask the darkness, and wait for hands that aren't my husband's