Chapter 13 - Vanessa Finally Admitted Anna Was Never Her Competition
Vanessa requested one mediated conversation almost two years after:
separation.
Not with Lily.
With:
me.
I agreed because I wanted answers to a few things that no document could:
explain.
She looked different.
Not destroyed.
Not transformed.
Just less certain.
I asked:
“When did Anna become competition to you?”
Vanessa stared.
“She didn’t while she was alive.”
I believed:
that.
“Then when?”
“After we started dating.”
Why?
“Because every important part of your house already had her fingerprints.”
The kitchen.
Family traditions.
School routines.
Lily.
Me.
Vanessa said:
“I felt like the second woman in a marriage where one person was dead.”
“That sounds painful.”
“It was.”
Then:
“It doesn’t explain what you did.”
“I know.”
Good.
Then:
“Why couldn’t you let Lily love both of you?”
Vanessa answered after a long silence.
“Because I didn’t believe she would.”
There.
“If Anna stayed important, I thought I would always be optional.”
“So you tried to make Anna smaller.”
“Yes.”
“And when Lily resisted?”
“I made Lily the problem.”
Specific.
Then the tracker.
“Why monitor the cemetery?”
“Because every time she went there, she came home distant from me.”
“Did you ever consider that maybe interrogating her afterward caused that?”
“No.”
At least:
honest.
Then the school counselor.
“I thought adults were encouraging her not to attach to me.”
“They weren’t.”
“I know now.”
Then the cedar box.
“Why not destroy it?”
Vanessa’s answer surprised:
me.
“Because I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Anna wrote those letters while she was dying.”
Humanity remained.
That did not erase the rest.
Vanessa said:
“I wanted control over when Lily saw them. I told myself I was waiting until she was mature enough.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“Until she loved me enough that Anna couldn’t change anything.”
There.
Not maturity.
Security.
Then the dog run.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“I was furious.”
“Because Lily called you not her mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you mean what you said about Anna’s junk?”
“No.”
I stared.
She corrected:
“I mean, I knew it wasn’t junk. That’s why I hated it.”
There.
The necklace mattered because:
it mattered.
Then she said:
“I thought if I could make Lily feel ashamed of needing Anna, she would stop using Anna against me.”
“She wasn’t using Anna against you.”
“I know.”
Then:
“She was remembering her mother.”
“Yes.”
That distinction took Vanessa years to:
understand.
Then she asked:
“Does Lily hate me?”
“I don’t speak for her.”
Good.
“What does she say?”
“That is hers.”
Vanessa nodded.
Then:
“Will she ever see me?”
“I don’t know.”
No promise.
Then I asked the question that had bothered me from the beginning.
“If the tracker had never fallen out, would you have stopped?”
Vanessa looked at:
me.
“No.”
There.
That answer closed something.
Not because I wanted cruelty.
Because I wanted:
truth.
The backyard incident was not one mistake that exposed an otherwise repairable relationship.
May you like
It interrupted a pattern Vanessa had no intention of ending.
---
