Chapter 10 - THE TRUTH AT GUNPOINT
Time stopped.
I stood frozen. One hand still outstretched. Sophie beside me, trembling. Hazel screaming in Vanessa’s arms. The needle pressed against her soft skin.
Vanessa’s chest heaved. Her eyes darted between me and the door. Between me and the approaching sirens.
“You wouldn’t,” I said. My voice barely sound. “She’s your niece.”
“She’s nothing!” Vanessa screamed back. “She’s Lydia’s child! Just like everything else! Everything I ever wanted—and she got it! Without even trying!”
“Vanessa—listen to me—”
“NO! You listen!” She pressed the needle harder. Hazel shrieked. “I was always second! Always the spare! Lydia got the looks! The parents! The husband! The money! The perfect life! And what did I get? Nothing! Until she fell!”
“Until you pushed her,” I said quietly.
Vanessa went still.
The sirens grew louder. Wailing through the night.
“You knew,” she whispered.
“I suspected. For three years I suspected something terrible happened that day. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was you. Her own sister.”
Vanessa’s face twisted into a mask of rage and grief and envy.
“She was weak!” Vanessa cried. “She didn’t appreciate any of it! She took you for granted! She took everything for granted! So I took it! I took her place! I became her! And I was better at it than she ever was!”
“You became a monster,” I said.
“I became everything she should have been!”
Sirens screamed right outside. Tires screeched on gravel. Doors slammed. Shouts.
Vanessa glanced toward the window. Then back at me. Panic finally breaking through her rage.
“Let them go,” I said. “Please. They have done nothing to you.”
She looked down at Hazel. Screaming, terrified. Then at Sophie. Staring at her with wide, knowing eyes.
Then she looked at me. And something in her face changed. The rage faded. Replaced by something heartbreakingly sad.
“I wanted to be loved,” she whispered. “I wanted to be the one you chose. I wanted to be the one who had everything.”
“I loved Lydia,” I said. “And I would have loved you too—if you had just been yourself.”
Vanessa shook her head. Tears spilled over. Real tears.
“No one ever loved just me. Only her. Always her.”
She looked at the syringe. Then at Hazel. Then slowly—terribly slowly—she lowered it.
Sophie ran forward. “Mommy!”
Sophie stopped. Corrected herself.
“Lydia…” Sophie whispered.
Vanessa looked at her. At the little girl who had known all along.
“I’m not her, Sophie,” Vanessa said softly. “I never was.”
She held Hazel out to me. I stepped forward carefully, took my trembling baby into my arms.
Vanessa stepped back toward the window. Sirens were at the door now. Footsteps thudding below.
“Vanessa,” I said. “Turn around. Put your hands up. It’s over.”
She looked at me. Really looked at me. For the first time in three years, she wasn’t pretending. She was just Vanessa. Lost. Angry. Broken.
“Lydia loved you very much,” she said quietly. “She told me once. She said you were the best thing that ever happened to her. I thought… I thought if I became her… you might love me too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She gave a sad, broken smile.
“Don’t be. I got three years of her life. Three years of seeing what I could have had. It wasn’t enough. But it was something.”
Heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Stay back!” an officer shouted from the doorway.
Vanessa turned. Hands raised.
“I’m coming,” she said calmly. She looked back at me one last time. “Tell them everything. Tell them the truth. But please… let Lydia rest. Don’t let them remember her sister as a monster. Let them remember her.”
She walked past me. Calmly. Toward the officers.
And as they took her—handcuffed her—she didn’t fight. She didn’t scream. She just looked straight ahead.
I held my girls tight. Sophie clinging to my neck, Hazel crying into my shoulder.
The man—Vanessa’s associate—was arrested downstairs without a fight.
And in the corner of the room, on a small table, I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.
A photograph. Two little girls. Identical. Standing side by side. Smiling.
On the back, in Lydia’s handwriting: My other half. Forever.
I picked it up. Held it gently.
May you like
Lydia had loved her sister. Even when Vanessa hated her. Even when Vanessa wanted everything she had. Lydia had loved her.
And Vanessa had destroyed the only person who ever truly loved her.
