Chapter 9 - My Sister Wanted My Life
Vanessa was waiting outside my house when I returned from Grandma's.
Her white Mercedes was parked crookedly along the curb, and she stood beside it with her arms crossed, wearing oversized sunglasses and the expression of someone who had already decided an apology was owed to her.
I remained in my car for a few seconds.
Then I called Daniel.
"She's here."
He didn't ask who.
"Do you want me to come home?"
"No. I can handle a conversation."
"All right. I'm twenty minutes away if you need me."
That was another thing I loved about him.
He offered support without assuming I couldn't manage my own life.
I stepped out of the car.
Vanessa immediately marched toward me.
"Finally."
"Hello to you too."
"I've been calling."
"I noticed."
She glanced at the leather document bag in my hand.
"Were you at Grandma's?"
"Yes."
Her jaw tightened.
"Dad said you were going to manipulate her."
I almost laughed.
"Grandma Ruth? Good luck to anyone attempting that."
Vanessa removed her sunglasses.
"Can we go inside?"
"No."
She blinked.
"What?"
"We can talk here."
"Seriously? You're going to make me stand on the sidewalk?"
"You've arrived without an invitation. The sidewalk is available."
Her expression hardened.
For several seconds, she looked nothing like the charming woman who floated through family gatherings collecting compliments.
She looked angry.
And frightened.
"What do you want, Claire?"
I studied her.
"You're standing outside my house, Vanessa. Shouldn't I be asking you that?"
"I mean what do you actually want? Dad's business? His money? Everyone to bow down and acknowledge how amazing you are?"
"No."
"Then why are you doing this?"
I looked toward the maple trees lining our street.
There was something exhausting about arguing with a person who believed that every consequence must be part of a personal attack.
"Which part?"
"Don't play stupid."
"The contract nonrenewal? The suspected forged signature? Or Grandpa's investment records?"
Vanessa went still.
It was brief.
But I saw it.
Her eyes flicked toward my document bag.
"What investment records?"
"Interesting question."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then you have nothing to worry about."
She moved closer.
"You've always done this."
"Done what?"
"Acted superior. Pretended you didn't care when everyone preferred me."
I felt a familiar ache beneath my ribs.
There it was.
The truth she'd spent years hiding beneath jokes and flirtation.
"Is that what you thought?" I asked.
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
"Please. You couldn't stand that Dad loved me more."
I looked at my sister.
The little girl who used to follow me from room to room.
The teenager who borrowed my clothes without asking.
The woman who repeatedly tried to humiliate me in front of my fiancé.
"Vanessa," I said quietly, "I never wanted Dad to love you less."
She frowned.
"I just wanted him to love me too."
For the first time, she had no immediate response.
Then her face changed.
She looked away.
"Oh, spare me."
I adjusted the strap of my bag.
"Is there anything else?"
"Yes, actually."
She pulled out her phone.
"I think you need to see something."
She turned the screen toward me.
It showed an old photograph of Daniel standing beside a blonde woman outside a restaurant.
The image appeared to have been taken several years earlier.
"Recognize her?"
"No."
"Her name is Rebecca."
I waited.
"Daniel's ex-girlfriend."
"And?"
Vanessa smiled.
"He hasn't told you everything."
I stared at her.
"You've been investigating my fiancé?"
"I've been protecting my sister."
The absurdity nearly made me laugh.
"From what?"
"From marrying someone who only wants access to your money."
I looked at the photograph again.
"Where did you get this?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Vanessa lowered the phone.
She seemed disappointed that I hadn't immediately burst into tears.
"Rebecca says Daniel has a pattern."
"What pattern?"
"Dating successful women. Getting close to their businesses. Moving on when something better comes along."
I remained silent.
Vanessa mistook that for uncertainty.
She stepped closer.
"I could have told you months ago, Claire. But you were so obsessed with playing perfect couple that you wouldn't have listened."
I looked directly at her.
"When did you speak to Rebecca?"
"Last week."
"Before or after you told Daniel to call you when he realized he could do better than me?"
Her lips tightened.
"That's not the point."
"It's exactly the point."
She shoved her phone back into her handbag.
"Fine. Don't believe me."
"I'll ask Daniel."
"You think he'll admit it?"
"I think he's entitled to answer before I accept a story from someone who's spent months trying to get his attention."
Vanessa's cheeks flushed.
"You always make everything sound ugly."
"Sometimes the truth is ugly."
She looked at the house behind me.
A beautiful two-story home with a stone walkway, wide windows, and a small front garden Daniel and I had planted together.
Her eyes lingered on the entrance.
"Must be nice," she said.
"What?"
"Having all this."
The change in her voice was unexpected.
For one moment, she sounded almost young.
"You've got the career, the house, the ring, the perfect man. And now apparently you're some secret millionaire."
"I'm not a millionaire because I won a contest against you."
She laughed.
"Everything's always so easy for you."
That sentence surprised me more than her accusation about Daniel.
Easy.
I thought about the years of student loans.
The nights spent studying while working two jobs.
The countless projects I'd rescued.
The investment financing I'd personally guaranteed.
The weekends I'd spent sleeping on office couches because a construction deadline couldn't move.
"What exactly was easy, Vanessa?"
She looked away.
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
For a moment, I thought she might.
Then her phone rang.
Dad.
I recognized the ringtone because he'd assigned himself the same obnoxious musical fanfare on her phone years earlier.
Vanessa answered immediately.
"Hi, Daddy."
Her expression shifted.
"I'm here now."
A pause.
"No. She won't listen."
She glanced at me.
"Yes, I asked."
Another pause.
Then something in her face tightened.
"Fine."
She ended the call.
"What did he want?" I asked.
"Nothing."
"Vanessa."
She opened her car door.
"Just stay away from the company."
"Why?"
She stopped.
For the first time that afternoon, her confidence visibly cracked.
"Because you have no idea what you're getting involved in."
Then she climbed into the Mercedes and drove away.
I stood on the sidewalk long after she disappeared.
When Daniel came home, I told him everything.
Including Rebecca.
He listened.
Then he unlocked his phone, searched for a contact, and placed it on the kitchen counter.
"Would you like to speak with her?"
I blinked.
"You still have her number?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because we're adults who ended a relationship without pretending the other person ceased to exist."
He showed me the conversation history.
The most recent exchange was from two years earlier, concerning a mutual friend's wedding.
Nothing suspicious.
Nothing hidden.
Daniel explained that Rebecca was an attorney who had moved to Boston after their relationship ended.
She'd married someone else the previous spring.
He hadn't spoken to her in months.
"Then why would Vanessa claim she warned her about you?"
"I don't know," he said.
He opened Rebecca's social media profile.
A wedding photograph filled the screen.
Rebecca stood beside a smiling man beneath an arch covered in flowers.
The caption celebrated their first anniversary.
I felt an uncomfortable sensation settle in my stomach.
Vanessa had either lied about their conversation or deliberately misrepresented it.
But why?
That evening, I received an email from an address I didn't recognize.
The subject line read:
You need to know what your sister asked me to do.
The sender was Rebecca.
May you like
And the first sentence made me sit down.
Claire, I have never met you, but Vanessa contacted me last Thursday and offered me money to help convince you that Daniel was cheating.
