Chapter 17 - What Vanessa Wanted

"Drop it," I said.

Vanessa's hand trembled.

"You still don't understand."

"I understand enough."

"No. You think this started with money."

Her eyes filled with a fury I'd never seen.

She looked at Claire.

"Your father chose her. Your friends chose her. Ethan chose her. Even after she was gone, every room in that house still belonged to her."

Claire stared at her. "So you hurt Sophie?"

Vanessa flinched.

"I wanted her to stop talking about you."

"You grabbed her hard enough to bruise her."

"Because she kept saying you were coming home!"

The confession echoed through the room.

Marcus was listening through the transmitter hidden in my watch.

I needed Vanessa to keep talking.

"Did you stage Claire's death?"

"Your father did."

"Did you help?"

She hesitated.

Then smiled through tears.

"I made one phone call. Then another. Then I realized how easy it was to make truth disappear when rich men were afraid."

Daniel closed his eyes.

"Vanessa, stop."

"Shut up."

She pressed the gun closer to Claire.

"I could've had everything if she had stayed gone."

Claire's voice was steady. "But I didn't."

"No. You came back and whispered to Sophie through fences like some ghost."

"She's my daughter."

"She was mine too!"

That sentence broke something open.

Vanessa sobbed once, then recovered.

"I fed her. I took her to school. I sat through fevers. And all she wanted was a dead woman."

Claire's eyes softened, but only for a second.

"Love doesn't leave bruises."

Vanessa screamed and swung the gun toward her.

I lunged.

The shot shattered the window.

Wind exploded into the room.

Luis grabbed Daniel and dragged him toward the back deck.

Claire tackled Vanessa.

The gun skidded across the floor.

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Vanessa's anger had a strange grief inside it. That didn't excuse anything. But it explained why she had been so convincing for so long. She hadn't spent years pretending to love us; she had loved the version of us that required Claire to remain dead and Sophie to remain grateful. The moment we became real people with memories of our own, her love turned into punishment.

Then the cliff house lights went out.