Mistress
By Patricia Farrell

 

The shiny ball struggled to make its way across the entryway rug. A slightly stooped gray-haired woman tiptoes after it and, with a slight groan, bends over to pick it up. High-pitched shouting slips under the library door alerting the nanny. Snippets of the argument carry words of warning.

Mistress's voice is unmistakable. Looking at her would have stopped anyone in their tracks before paying attention to what she said. Lipstick is deep red, the black dress cinched tight around her waist. The dress material is smooth and soft, like a thousand silk spiders, their legs skittered over one another, wove a web of silk. Her perfume is intoxicating.

"No, we're not paying for it! I want her gone, and I want it today. Isn't this the week she begins her treatments? She's got cancer, for God's sake."
Any responses uttered are indistinguishable. But the storm is coming.

Called into the library, a low-toned dismissal quickly dispatches the man's guilt as he scribbles the nanny’s final check and drops it on the desk. No medical payments will be made.

Mistress swivels on one heel by the front door, lowering her sunglasses to look at the older woman.

"The children are visiting my sister's house for a few weeks. You can leave now. I see you already packed your bags for your vacation, and you have our check, of course."

Framed in the doorway, she is smiling, a goddess in her prime. Her hair is blindingly radiant blonde, the kind of woman where men stare helplessly.

Mistress continues, "Oh, and before you leave, tell the cook to save one of those cakes she's making." A wink, and she's out the door.

The red soles of her shoes peek for a moment as they crush the pebbled driveway, and she slides into her Maybach.

The cook is busily making jam for rat poison. It's a sticky, sweet mixture resembling strawberry jam and meant for the rodents by the pool house. The boiling jam is coaxed into a jar and left to cool on a counter. Mistress's husband returns early. He smells the sweet jam, ascends the stairs to the upper floor kitchen, spots the jam, and hurriedly mounds it on a thick slice of bread.

The jam's sweetness tingles his tongue, then inflames his throat, and he begins choking for breath as he runs for water. The new soles on his loafers slip on an apple peel sending him over the terrace railing onto the stone floor below. In the quiet, the rats slither from the pool house.

The will is shocking. Everything, the stalking, romancing, tricking, has been for naught. He had a second family. They get everything.

A new husband search will begin immediately.

 

P. A. Farrell is a psychologist and published author with McGraw-Hill, Demos Health, Cafe Lit, Ravens Perch, Humans of the World, and Scarlet Leaf Review, writes for Medium.com, and has published self-help books. She lives on the East Coast of the US.