Chapter 5
Everyone watched her giggle and pull.
The shirt fell out.
Pink.
Tiny.
Cute.
Except for the front.
There was a giant question mark where the word
Daddy
should have been.
Beneath it:
RESULTS STILL PENDING.
The room went silent.
Elias stared at the shirt.
Something changed in his face.
He stood.
Lifted Ren from her high chair.
And walked down the hallway.
A few seconds later, our bedroom door locked.
Marlo laughed nervously.
“Oh, come on.
It’s a gag gift.”
I looked at her.
A year of humiliation rose inside me at once.
“You’re miserable.”
Her smile vanished.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Mom stood.
“Please—”
I ignored her.
“You destroy people because it entertains you.
Both your marriages failed, your own kids barely answer your calls, and apparently your solution is to make everybody else as miserable as you are.”
Marlo’s face hardened.
“You’re being dramatic over a shirt.”
“Your joke has been eating my marriage alive for a year.”
She shrugged.
“If your marriage is that weak, maybe it deserves to fall apart.”
Something inside me broke.
I turned toward everyone in the room.
“No.
We’re doing this now.”
I told them about the group chat.
The made-up coworker.
The online jokes.
The constant messages.
I told them Elias had secretly researched DNA tests.
“This was never humor,” I said.
“It was cruelty.
And every single person who laughed, stayed quiet, or told me to ignore it helped her.”
Marlo grabbed her purse.
“You’re insane.”
She headed toward the door.
I followed her.
Then I said the sentence I had promised myself I would never say.
“If you ever contact us again, or make one more joke about my daughter, I will tell everyone what you did to Dad while he was dying.”
Marlo stopped.
Her body went completely still.
The color disappeared from her face.
Behind me, the room became silent enough that I could hear the refrigerator motor in the kitchen.
She turned slowly.
“What are you talking about?”
I opened the front door.
“Dad’s missing fifty-two thousand dollars.”
Mom gasped.
Marlo gripped the doorframe.
“The checks written during his last five months in hospice,” I continued.
“Checks carrying his signature when he couldn’t hold a coffee cup without spilling it.”
“You’re lying.”
“And the deed.”
Her expression changed.
That was how I knew.
I had never been completely sure until that second.
“The quitclaim deed transferring Dad’s house into your name five weeks before he died.”