Chapter 6 - Vanessa Wanted Lily Gone Before We Got Married
The motive was not an inheritance.
It was not a secret company.
It was much uglier because it was so ordinary.
Vanessa wanted to marry me.
She wanted me to sell the suburban home Rachel and I had chosen together.
She wanted us to move into her gated property forty minutes away, where she said we could “start clean.”
I repeatedly said:
not yet.
Why?
Lily.
Her school was nearby.
Rachel’s sister lived ten minutes away.
Her therapist was nearby.
Her bedroom still felt safe.
Every time Vanessa proposed a major change, Lily became anxious.
I slowed everything down.
Vanessa interpreted that as Lily controlling:
me.
One text to her sister read:
Mark will not make a single adult decision without asking how Lily feels first.
Then:
Rachel has been dead three years and she still runs this house through that child.
There it was.
Rachel.
Vanessa did not merely resent Lily.
She resented the fact that Lily preserved a relationship between me and a dead woman.
Photos.
Stories.
School traditions.
The backyard Rachel designed.
Buddy, whom Rachel adopted when Lily was a toddler.
Everything Vanessa wanted changed seemed attached to:
Rachel.
Then the wedding planner.
Vanessa had already reserved a tentative date without telling me.
The date was six weeks after the proposed Pine Hollow intake.
She apparently expected Lily to remain in treatment or transition during the most intense planning period.
One note to the planner said:
Child participation uncertain. Keep ceremony adult-focused.
My daughter might not even attend my wedding.
Vanessa had planned around that possibility without telling:
me.
Then her message to a friend:
Once Lily is somewhere professionals can manage her, Mark and I finally get to find out whether we even have a relationship without constant guilt.
That was the emotional motive.
Vanessa wanted to remove the child, then use the resulting quiet as evidence that removing her had been:
correct.
Then Lily told me something else.
“Vanessa said when you marry her, she becomes the mom.”
“What did you say?”
“I said Mommy is still my mom.”
“What did Vanessa say?”
“Dead people can’t be moms.”
I had to look away.
Rachel had been dead for three years.
That did not make Vanessa my daughter’s replacement mother by appointment.
Then Lily added:
“She said if I went to the school, I would stop making you remember Mommy all the time.”
There.
Lily had been taught that remembering her mother harmed:
me.
That explained why she had recently stopped talking about Rachel at dinner.
I thought grief was becoming easier.
No.
My daughter had become quieter because an adult told her memory was selfish.
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And every time she became quieter, I thought Vanessa was helping.
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