PART 1: My Murder Before Lunch

The worst gossip in Tanay heard my husband planning my murder.

By lunchtime, half the neighborhood was trying to save me.

By three o’clock, my cousin had Ramon facedown on our grass.

And my husband was holding a bottle labeled POISON.

But let me begin with Tita Maribel.

Everyone in our area knew her golden rule: if you sneezed at breakfast, by lunch she had diagnosed you with pneumonia, bankruptcy, and a secret second family in Antipolo.

She did not spread lies, according to her.

She merely “connected important information.”

So when she burst into my sari-sari store one Tuesday morning with her slippers slapping the pavement and six neighbors racing behind her, I knew somebody’s life was about to explode.

I just did not expect it to be mine.

“Lorna!” she cried.

She knocked over a display of instant noodles, grabbed both my wrists, and stared into my eyes.

“Diyos ko. Do not go home.”

“Why? Is there a snake?”

“Worse.”

She leaned close enough for me to smell the menthol candy in her mouth.

“Ramon is planning to kill you.”

For one second, nobody moved.

Then Mang Celso dropped his bottle of vinegar.

“My Ramon?” I asked.

“How many husbands named Ramon do you have?” Maribel snapped.

“According to you, perhaps three.”

Nobody laughed.

That frightened me more than her words.

My husband and I had been married for twenty-eight years.

Ramon forgot birthdays, burned rice, and once drove ten kilometers with our cat sleeping on top of his pickup.

But he was gentle.

When we argued, his strongest insult was, “Lorna, you are being slightly unreasonable.”

He could not kill a cockroach without apologizing first.

Still, Tita Maribel’s hands were trembling.

“I was behind your fence,” she whispered.

“Why were you behind my fence?”

“My papaya rolled there.”

“Your house is across the road.”

“It was a strong papaya.”

The neighbors nodded as if this made sense.

Maribel continued. “He was inside that old shed, talking to another person. I heard him clearly. He said, ‘She can’t survive the second act. The poison goes in the tea. Once Lorna falls, we move the body.’”

Cold rushed through me.

Not because I believed Ramon wanted me dead.

Because every night for three weeks, he had disappeared into that shed.

Whenever I asked why, he said he was fixing tools.

Yet not one broken chair, rusty hinge, or loose cabinet had been repaired.

He had also started locking his phone.

And two days earlier, I had found a receipt in his pocket for a black wig, rubber gloves, and twenty meters of red cloth.

I had assumed the hardware store was becoming strange.

Now my chest tightened.

“Maybe he was watching television,” I said.

“There is no television in the shed,” Maribel replied.

“A video on his phone.”

“Then why did another voice say, ‘Make sure she drinks every drop’?”

My mouth went dry.

“There was another voice?”

“A woman.”

That single word was gasoline.

Within minutes, my sister Nena arrived clutching a rosary in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.

My cousin Boyet came carrying a wooden bat. He had not run that fast since somebody announced free lechon at a baptism.

“You are staying with me,” Nena ordered.

“Nobody is hitting Ramon,” I said.

“I will hit only his legs,” Boyet promised.

“Nobody is hitting any part of him!”

But fear had already entered my body. It sat heavily behind my ribs.

Ramon had been quiet since my nanay died the year before. I had been quiet too.

Our home had changed after the funeral.

I still cooked for two, still opened the store, still washed our clothes, but some part of me remained beside Nanay’s empty bed, listening for her cough.

Ramon tried to cheer me up.

He brought suman. He told terrible jokes. He danced while washing dishes and almost broke his hip.

I smiled for him.

But I had not truly laughed in months.

Had my sadness become unbearable to live with?

Then a tricycle stopped outside, and two barangay officers stepped down.

I turned to Maribel.

“You called officers?”

“Of course. I am a witness.”

Before I could send everyone away, we heard Ramon’s rusty pickup coughing around the corner.

The whole crowd rushed toward our gate.

I followed because it was my husband, my house, and apparently my murder.

The pickup stopped.

Ramon climbed out, saw thirty people in our driveway, and froze.

“Lorna?” he said. “Why is everybody—”

Then he reached into the passenger seat.

He lifted a dark glass bottle.

A white label was taped across it.

In thick red letters, it said POISON.

Tita Maribel screamed so loudly that three dogs began barking.

“Arestuhin niyo ’yan!”

PART 2: What Was in His Bag

Boyet moved before anybody could stop him.

He charged across the driveway, grabbed Ramon around the waist, and tackled him onto the grass.

The bottle flew from Ramon’s hand.

Nena shrieked. Maribel ducked behind me. One officer caught the bottle before it smashed, while the other pulled Boyet away from my husband.

“What is wrong with all of you?” Ramon yelled, spitting out grass.

“Do not pretend!” Boyet shouted. “We know about the tea!”

Ramon’s face changed.

Not guilt. Panic.

He looked straight at me.

“You heard?”

My stomach dropped.

“He confessed!” Maribel cried.

“Ramon,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady, “what exactly cannot survive the second act?”

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

One officer unscrewed the bottle and sniffed it. Everybody leaned away.

He touched one drop to a scrap of white paper. The liquid spread into a black-purple stain.

“Food coloring,” he said.

The crowd leaned forward again.

“Very dark food coloring,” Maribel argued.

The second officer opened the canvas bag in Ramon’s pickup.

First came the rubber gloves.

Then the black wig.

Then a coil of red cloth.

Maribel clutched my shoulder harder with every item.

Finally, the officer pulled out a stack of stapled papers.

Twenty copies.

Across the top page, in giant letters, were the words:

THE MIDNIGHT ADOBO MURDER

Below that:

A Comedy Mystery by Ramon de la Cruz

There was a silence so complete that I heard our neighbor’s rooster sneeze.

The officer turned the page.

“Characters,” he read. “Inspector Pogi. Doctor Del Mundo. Widow Lorna—”

Every head turned toward me.

Ramon closed his eyes.

“The victim is named Lorna?” I asked.

“I was going to change it.”

“You gave my name to a poisoned widow?”

“It fit the rhyme in the song.”

Boyet slowly lowered his bat.

Nena hid the kitchen knife inside her handbag.

“What song?” I asked.

Ramon stood, brushed dirt from his trousers, and muttered, “The Ballad of the Dead Adobo.”

Mang Celso began laughing first.

Then the officers.

Then the neighbors.

Soon our driveway sounded like a fiesta. Even Boyet had to sit on the curb because his knees were shaking.

Only Tita Maribel refused to surrender.

“I heard a woman’s voice,” she insisted.

Ramon stared at her. Then he pinched his nose and spoke in a high voice.

“Make sure she drinks every drop!”

The laughter doubled.

Maribel looked offended. “Your woman voice is very convincing.”

“Thank you,” Ramon said before realizing it was not a compliment.

I should have laughed too.

Instead, tears filled my eyes.

Not from fear anymore.

From three weeks of secrets. From a year of grief.

From the sight of my sixty-one-year-old husband with grass in his hair, carrying twenty copies of a murder play he had never mentioned.

“Why?” I asked.

Ramon’s smile disappeared.

The neighbors slowly quieted.

“Why were you sneaking into the shed every night?” I said. “Why did you lock your phone? Why write this at all?”

He looked around at the crowd, embarrassed. Ramon hated speaking in front of even four people. Now thirty were waiting.

But he walked toward me.

From his shirt pocket, he pulled a wrinkled script covered in handwritten notes. At the top of every page, beside my name, he had drawn a tiny sun.

“The senior citizens’ theater group needed a play for Saturday,” he said. “I volunteered to write one.”

“You hate performing.”

“Yes.”

“You once pretended to lose your voice to avoid giving a wedding toast.”

“Also yes.”

“Then why volunteer?”

His eyes lowered to the script.

“Because you have been heartbroken since Nanay passed,” he said softly.

“You wake up. You work. You feed me. You say you are fine. But you do not sing with the radio anymore. You do not tease me when I burn the garlic. Even when you smile, your eyes stay sad.”

My throat closed.

He rubbed his thumb over one of the little suns.

“I kept remembering how you laughed at my Inspector Pogi voice when we were newly married. So I wrote something foolish. I practiced in secret because I wanted to be good when you saw it.”

“You wrote an entire play just to make me laugh?”

“I was hoping the other people might laugh too. But mostly you.”

Twenty-eight years of quiet love stood in front of me wearing torn trousers.

I stepped into his arms and buried my face against his chest.

“You foolish man,” I whispered.

His arms tightened around me.

“Are you angry?”

“Very.”

“Will you still come on Saturday?”

I pulled back and looked at the script.

“Of course. Someone must make sure you murder me correctly.”

The crowd cheered.

That should have ended it.

But then Ramon’s theater director, Aling Cora, pushed through the gate, breathless and pale.

“Ramon,” she gasped, “we have a disaster.”

“What now?”

“Our Widow Lorna fell off a karaoke platform.”

She looked directly at me.

“We need a new murder victim by Saturday.”

PART 3: Who Drank the Poison

“No,” I said.

Ramon said, “Absolutely not.”

Aling Cora clapped her hands. “Wonderful. Rehearsal at six.”

That was how I joined the senior citizens’ theater group against both my will and my husband’s.

At first, I agreed only because I wanted to help him.

Widow Lorna had twelve lines, one scream, and a dramatic collapse beside a pot of adobo.

I had fallen beside pots before. Usually after slipping on water.

I believed I was qualified.

I was wrong.

At our first rehearsal, I forgot every line.

At the second, I drank the prop tea too early and died before Ramon had added the poison.

At the third, my black wig slipped over my eyes during the collapse, and I knocked down Inspector Pogi, the dining table, and one cardboard window.

Ramon lay under me, wheezing with laughter.

“Stop laughing,” I said.

“I cannot. You killed the inspector.”

I started laughing too.

It came out rusty and strange. Then louder. Soon I was holding my stomach while Aling Cora tried to rescue the cardboard window.

Ramon stopped laughing before I did.

He just watched me.

His eyes became wet.

That was when I understood. The play was already doing what he had hoped.

Saturday night, the church hall was packed beyond reason.

News of my “murder” had traveled faster than a typhoon warning.

Plastic chairs filled every row. Children sat on windowsills. Vendors sold peanuts outside.

Two people arrived from Morong because Maribel had messaged her cousins that the performance was “based on a true crime personally prevented by me.”

She sat in the front row wearing sunglasses and a scarf, as if avoiding reporters.

Behind the curtain, Ramon’s hands shook so badly that his fake mustache kept falling off.

“I cannot do this,” he whispered.

I fixed the mustache under his nose.

“You wrote twenty-seven pages.”

“That was in a shed.”

“You practiced a woman’s voice.”

“Also in a shed.”

“You survived Boyet.”

He glanced through the curtain at my cousin, who was holding the same wooden bat as part of his costume.

“Barely.”

I took Ramon’s calloused hands.

For one year, he had tried to pull me back toward life without demanding that I hurry.

He had sat beside me during silent breakfasts. He had brought flowers to Nanay’s grave. He had let me cry without telling me to stop.

Now he was terrified, and it was my turn.

“Look only at me,” I said. “If nobody laughs, I will.”

“Even if I forget my lines?”

“Especially then.”

The curtain opened.

The play was a beautiful disaster.

Doctor Del Mundo lost one glove.

Boyet entered through the cardboard window instead of the cardboard door.

A fake thunder sound played during a romantic scene, then refused to play during the murder.

But Ramon did not freeze.

Whenever fear touched his face, he found me across the stage.

And I smiled.

In the second act, he lifted the dark bottle. The audience became quiet because everyone knew what was coming.

Ramon raised one eyebrow and thundered, “The poison goes in the tea!”

Every head turned toward Tita Maribel.

She jumped up.

“That is exactly what I heard!” she shouted.

The hall exploded.

People stamped their feet. Children screamed with laughter. One officer bent forward until his cap fell off.

Ramon stared at Maribel, then added a line that was not in the script.

“Madam, why were you behind my fence?”

“Papaya!” she yelled.

The laughter became so loud we had to stop the play.

I looked at Ramon under the hot stage lights.

His mustache was crooked. His knees were trembling. His face shone with sweat and joy.

Then it was my turn to drink.

I lifted the teacup.

“To my beloved husband,” I announced, “who would never poison me because he cannot even measure cough syrup correctly.”

Ramon covered his face.

I drank, staggered across the stage, and gave the longest, most ridiculous death in the history of Tanay.

I clutched my throat. I spun twice. I kicked the chair.

I rose again because I had forgotten to say my final line, then died a second time directly on Ramon’s shoes.

The audience roared.

And there on the floor, with my cheek against a dusty stage and tears running into my wig, I laughed.

Not a polite laugh.

Not the small careful sound I had been giving people so they would stop worrying.

I laughed until my ribs hurt.

I laughed for Ramon, for Nanay, for the terrible year behind us, and for the ridiculous man who had tried to heal my heart with poisoned tea and a cardboard window.

Ramon forgot the next line.

So he knelt beside me and whispered, “There you are, mahal.”

The audience went quiet.

I squeezed his hand.

Then Tita Maribel shouted from the front row, “Check her pulse! I am a witness!”

The hall erupted again.

Ramon pulled me to my feet, and we bowed together under the spotlight.

For the first time since Nanay died, I did not feel guilty for being happy.

As the curtain closed, Ramon kissed my forehead and asked, “Same play next year?”

I looked at Tita Maribel, already telling strangers how she had solved the case.

“Yes,” I said. “But next time, we murder the gossip.”