Chapter 2 - Vivienne Had Been Telling Lila She Wasn’t “Really” One Of Us
Lila’s mother died when Lila was four.
Her name was Rebecca.
She and I had been married for nine years.
Cancer took her in eleven months.
Nothing in my life prepared me for raising a child while grieving the woman who had known me since college.
Lila remembered more than people realized.
Rebecca’s perfume.
The pancakes she burned every Sunday.
A blue sweater.
A song she used to sing badly in the car.
And one sentence Rebecca told her during the final months:
“You belong anywhere your daddy belongs.”
That became important after Rebecca died.
Because Vivienne believed the opposite.
Vivienne was Walter’s younger sister.
That made her my aunt and Lila’s great-aunt.
She had been part of my life since childhood.
She never particularly liked Rebecca.
Called her “ordinary.”
Said she had no understanding of “our kind of family.”
I ignored it while Rebecca was alive.
After Rebecca died, Vivienne redirected the contempt toward Lila.
Not openly at first.
A forgotten Christmas gift.
A seat at the end of the children’s table.
Invitations that mysteriously never reached us.
Comments such as:
“You’re very much your mother’s daughter.”
The words sounded harmless.
The tone wasn’t.
Then came the first direct statement.
Lila was six.
Vivienne told her:
“You shouldn’t get too attached to this house. It belongs to the real family.”
Lila told me.
I confronted Vivienne.
She laughed.
“She misunderstood.”
I accepted that explanation.
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That was mistake number one.
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