Chương 7
Not everything.
Not yet.
I could not bring myself to say every detail out loud.
Especially the messages.
Especially the fear.
My mother listened quietly.
When I finished, she looked down at the sweater.
“Lily never told me.”
Her voice cracked.
“She called me two days before it happened.”
My father looked up.
“What?”
My mother swallowed.
“She said she was stressed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“Because I thought she was having problems with Jason.”
She wiped her eyes.
“And I told her the same thing I always told her.”
I already knew.
“Give him time.”
My mother looked ashamed.
“I thought I was helping.”
Nobody answered.
Because there was nothing comforting to say.
Families carried guilt differently.
My mother carried every moment she wished she had reacted differently.
My father carried every moment he wished he had protected better.
And I carried every moment I had assumed Lily would tell me if she really needed help.
The next morning, Daniel called me before I had finished breakfast.
“I found something.”
I sat down immediately.
“What?”
“The business account.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What about it?”
“I traced the company name.”
“And?”
“It is connected to Marcus Vale.”
I closed my eyes.
“How?”
“Through a holding company.”
Daniel sounded frustrated.
“Which means someone wanted distance between the money and the person receiving it.”
“Is that illegal?”
“I did not say that.”
“But?”
“But it is unusual.”
I looked out my window.
The neighborhood was completely normal.
A man walking his dog.
A teenager riding a bicycle.
Someone watering flowers.
The world had no idea that my sister’s death was becoming a question nobody wanted answered.
“What do we do now?”
Daniel was quiet.
Then he said something I did not expect.
“We find out what Jason knows.”
I frowned.
“You just told me not to confront him.”
“I said not to accuse him.”
“That sounds different.”
“It is.”
He paused.
“People reveal things when they believe they still have control.”
I did not like the idea.
But I understood it.
Jason had spent weeks managing the story.
Maybe the best way to learn the truth was to let him think he was still writing it.
Later that afternoon, I went to Lily’s house.
The police had released it back to the family.
Jason was not there.
That surprised me.
I expected him to avoid me.
Instead, he was sitting on the back porch when I arrived.
He looked exhausted.
Not fake exhausted.
Actually exhausted.
For a moment, I saw the man Lily had loved.
The man who used to bring her breakfast in bed.
The man who cried when they found out they were having a son.
Then I remembered Rachel standing beside him at the funeral.
And the memory disappeared.
“I was wondering when you’d come,” he said.
I stayed standing.
“Why?”
“Because I know you.”
“No, you knew Lily.”
He looked away.
That hurt him.
I saw it.
But I did not apologize.
“You think I killed her.”
The directness shocked me.
I said nothing.
Jason laughed quietly.
“That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
“That eventually someone would look at me and see a monster.”
His voice was different.
Lower.
Less controlled.
“You want me to believe I didn’t hurt her?”
“I want the truth.”
He nodded slowly.
“I wish I had more of that to give you.”
I studied him.
“Where were you the night Lily died?”
His eyes moved to mine.
There it was.
A small pause.
Almost nothing.
But enough.
“I was home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Can anyone prove that?”
His face tightened.
“No.”
The answer bothered me because it was honest.
Or because it sounded honest.
“I loved her,” he said.
I looked toward the house.
“Then why was Rachel at the funeral?”
He closed his eyes.
“I don’t have a good answer.”
“That’s convenient.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“It’s just true.”
He stood.
“I made mistakes.”
The words surprised me.
Jason admitting anything felt unnatural.
“I hurt her.”
He looked at the ground.
“But I did not kill her.”
I wanted to believe that sentence.
I wanted a simple villain.
Someone I could hate without confusion.
But real life rarely gave people the courtesy of being simple.
“Then tell me about Marcus Vale.”
Jason’s face changed.
Only for a second.
But I saw it.
Fear.
Not anger.
Not confusion.
Fear.
“Who told you that name?”
I did not answer.
And his reaction gave me more information than any confession could have.
“Jason.”
He stepped back.
“Emily, you need to stop looking into this.”
The warning was quiet.
Almost gentle.
That made it worse.
“Why?”
He looked toward the street.
Because for the first time since Lily died, Jason looked like someone who was not trying to hide a mistake.
He looked like someone afraid of what would happen if the truth came out.
“Because Lily should have stopped looking too.”
The words hung between us.
And before I could ask what he meant, his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed instantly.
Then he walked away to answer.
But not before I saw the name.
Marcus Vale.
I watched Jason walk away with the phone pressed to his ear, and every instinct I had told me to follow him.
Not because I wanted a confrontation.
Because I needed to know who had the power in that conversation.
Jason stopped near the edge of the yard, his back turned toward me.
He spoke quietly.
Too quietly for me to hear the words.
But I saw his shoulders.
I saw the way he kept looking toward the house.
The same house where my sister had spent the final years of her life.
The same house where she had fallen.
Or been pushed.
I hated that my mind kept returning to that possibility.
May you like
A part of me still fought against it.
Because accepting that Lily’s death might have been intentional meant accepting that someone she trusted had become the person she needed protection from.
