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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LILY
I was at the top of the stairs and could hear them clearly. I've been having a hard time accepting my sister's true feelings for me. Now it's time that my parents did the same. It will be hard for both of them to face the facts.
I can’t imagine having a child who wants to kill their sibling. It would be traumatic.
My parents might have seen a gradual change in my sister, but for me, it seemed to happen abruptly. One day, she was a loving sister who I followed around and tried to imitate, then she seemed to suddenly hate me so much that I tried to stay out of her path.
I remember the day I was home from college and my parents had gone on a weekend trip, just the two of them. Violet hung out at the house with me instead of staying in her apartment. The night before, we had a movie night and ate so much junk food my stomach hurt the next day. I got up late and went looking for Violet. I thought we could laze around the swimming pool and work on our tans. I finally found her in Dad's den looking at some papers. I walked into the room to see what she had found. We were always snooping in Dad's stuff hoping to find something interesting. Dad didn’t share any of his lawyer stuff at home. Mom didn’t like him bringing his work home.
Whatever Violet found seemed bad. She was practically white and started to cry. I wanted to see what she was looking at, but she snatched everything up before I could get a peek.
"What did you find?" I asked her.
She wouldn't say anything to me. Just pushed past me and left the house without a word. She never came back that entire weekend. I even called her a few times to check on her. Ever since that day, she has been cold to me and seems to hate me. In front of my parents, she treated me like nothing had changed, but in private, I only received her hate.
I step down to the bottom of the steps. I've heard enough.
"She wanted to kill me."
I can't stop lying to my parents or myself. Violet told me she wanted me dead. Neither of my parents look happy. Blake comes to my side for moral support because I don't know if I can say everything that needs to be said if he isn’t here with me. He pulls me into a hug to give me strength, then leads me over to a chair to sit on his lap. He's always taking care of me.
Dad tries to take over by asking Blake to leave to give us time to talk. I think it's funny that Dad thinks he can boss him around. He's delusional if he wants me to tell the cops that Violet didn't plan on killing me. I finally can't hold it in anymore. That secret that I've kept from my parents needs to be told.
"Violet is the one who slept with Ted," I tell them both.
I know it's a great shock to them, but Violet wanted to hurt me with her news and stop the wedding so it would humiliate me. She wanted to mess up my life big time. She accomplished that. She didn't know at the time that she did me a huge favor by telling me about her and Ted.
My parents are surprised at the news. I guess I'm not the only one who was completely duped by her. I thought maybe Dad knew but didn't want to hurt me.
Blake rubs my back, trying to soothe me. I feel better now that I got it off my chest. There is one other thing that I need to know before we go into depth about Violet's actions from yesterday.
"Do either of you know why Violet hates me?"
I look between the two of them. Mom can't look me in the eye, and Dad goes all quiet.
"Can you just tell me? I don't think we should have any more secrets."
My dad gives me his stoic look, like he's not sharing anything. Mom gives a little cough, then looks up at me.
"We don't talk about this to anyone. But Violet is adopted. We think she found the records a couple of years ago."
I can't believe it. She is adopted, and like everything else in our family, we don't talk about it. I just don't know why she would hate me. I didn't have anything to do with it.
"That makes sense. She was in Dad's office looking at some papers. She stormed out of the house with the papers. After that day, she was different."
Mom starts crying, and Dad actually goes over to comfort her. I've never seen this side of him.
"Why didn't you tell us? Why make it so secretive?"
There has to be more to the story.
"Who are Violet's parents?" Blake asks.
They don't say anything for the longest time. They don't want to talk about it. I don't understand what's going on.
"We don't know who her parents are. We tried for several years to have kids, but nothing worked. Your dad knew a lawyer who dealt with adoptions that were quite..."
