Chapter 5 - The Pregnancy That Wasn’t
Vanessa tried to cry.
It was impressive, in a way.
Her eyes filled quickly. Her mouth trembled. She pressed one hand to her stomach and shifted her voice into something fragile.
“Daniel, I was scared. Your mother has hated me from the beginning. She’s been trying to come between us, and with the baby—”
“There is no baby,” I said.
The words landed harder than the recording.
Daniel looked at me.
Vanessa stopped breathing.
I opened the second file on my phone.
“I found the clinic invoice in my study. It wasn’t prenatal care. It was for a contraceptive implant.”
Vanessa’s face drained of color.
Chloe whispered, “Vanessa?”
Daniel stood slowly.
“Is that true?”
Vanessa’s eyes moved across the garden, searching for an exit, a witness she could bend, a sentence that would make her human again.
“Daniel, I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
She swallowed.
“After the wedding.”
“After my mother signed over the house?”
Her expression cracked.
That answer was enough.
Daniel looked toward me, then at the uneven ends of my hair, then at the silver locks scattered across the roses.
“Why?” he asked Vanessa.
The question was not loud.
That made it worse.
Vanessa’s tears changed. They became angry.
“You have no idea what it’s like to be treated like I’m marrying beneath this house. Everything here is hers. Every room. Every portrait. Every rule. I was supposed to join your family, but she made sure I would never own anything.”
I stared at her.
“So you decided to steal what my husband left me?”
“It should be Daniel’s.”
“It will be Daniel’s when I choose to leave it to him.”
Vanessa laughed once, sharp and desperate.
“And until then? We all wait for you to die?”
Daniel flinched as if she had struck him.
There are sentences that cannot be repaired after they enter the room.
That was one.
Chloe stepped back from her sister.
Daniel’s voice became very quiet.
“The wedding is off.”
Vanessa turned to him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do this to me.”
May you like
He looked at the scissors still in her hand.
“You did this to yourself.”
