Chapter 5 - The Family Splits
The silence that settled over my front lawn after Marlo sped away was heavier than the roar of her engine.
Mom stood frozen on the sidewalk. Her face was ashen, her breathing shallow and ragged. "Clara... tell me you made that up to scare her. Please tell me your sister didn't... she couldn't have..."
"I have the bank records in my safe, Mom," I said gently, walking over and wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders. "I will show you everything. Every check, every date, every penny."
Aunt Evelyn began to cry softly. The cousins who had participated in Marlo’s secret Facebook group were looking at the grass, suddenly desperately interested in their shoes.
"Josie," I called out, looking directly at my cousin who had sent me the screenshots.
Josie flinched. "Clara, I'm so sorry. I didn't know—"
"Delete the group," I said, my voice brooking no argument. "All of you delete it. And if I hear one more word about my daughter’s parentage from anyone in this family, none of you will ever see Ren again. Am I understood?"
Nobody argued. Within ten minutes, every guest had quietly packed their things, apologized through muttered, shame-filled voices, and left.
I walked back into the house.
The silence inside was different. It felt sterile, hollowed out.
I walked down the hallway to our master bedroom. The door was still locked.
I knocked softly. "Elias. It’s me. Everyone is gone."
A moment later, the lock clicked. The door opened.
Elias stood there. He was still holding Ren, who had fallen asleep against his shoulder, her tiny thumb wedged into her mouth, her fiery red curls spilled over his forearm like spun copper.
He looked at me, his eyes wide, shocked. He had heard everything through the open window overlooking the front yard.
"Is that true?" he whispered. "About your dad's money?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I was ashamed," I admitted, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. "I was ashamed of my sister. I was trying to protect Mom from having a stroke. And I thought... I thought if I just ignored Marlo, she would get bored and leave us alone."
Elias looked down at our daughter. He touched her cheek with his thumb, then looked back at me.
"She’s never going to stop, Clara," he said, his voice cracked with exhaustion. "You threatened her with prison today. Women like Marlo don't surrender when you corner them. They burn the building down with everyone inside."
He was right.
Within twenty-four hours, Marlo launched her counter-offensive.
She didn't call me. She didn't call Mom.
Instead, she posted a public, two-thousand-word manifesto on Facebook, tagging dozens of our mutual acquaintances, high school friends, and extended family members.
*I am being falsely accused of heinous financial crimes by my own sister,* the post began, accompanied by a picture of her weeping beside our father’s grave. *Clara has manufactured forged documents to distract this family from the truth she cannot face: that her marriage is built on infidelity. She refuses to take a simple, scientific DNA test because she knows the results will shatter her husband’s life. Instead of being honest, she is attempting to send her own sister to prison. Please pray for my family during this dark time of spiritual warfare.*
The post racked up dozens of comments within hours.
*Stay strong, Marlo!* wrote an old family friend.
*Blood should stick together, Clara needs help,* wrote another.
Then came the text message from Beckett, Elias’s brother.
He texted Elias a link to Marlo’s post, along with a single sentence:
*If she's innocent, Elias, why doesn't she just take the test? Why threaten Marlo with the cops? Something smells rotten, man.*
Elias was sitting at the kitchen island when that text came through. I watched his face fall, watched the shadows creep back over his eyes like an eclipse.
The poison wasn't dead. It was mutating.
I walked over, took his phone out of his hand, and placed it on the granite counter.
"We are ending this," I said.
Elias looked up at me, defeated. "How, Clara? You can't sue everyone. You can't arrest everyone."
"We aren't going to Walgreens for a twenty-dollar kit that Marlo can claim was tampered with," I told him, looking directly into his exhausted brown eyes. "Tomorrow morning at nine AM, we are going to LabCorp's regional clinical facility downtown. We will do a full, court-admissible, chain-of-custody genetic panel. Ren, you, and me."
Elias blinked, stunned. "You... you said taking the test meant our marriage was broken."
"Our marriage *is* broken, Elias," I said, my voice cracking with emotion. "Marlo broke it, and you let her. But I am not doing this to prove anything to Marlo. I am doing this so that fifteen years from now, when Ren is an insecure teenager looking in the mirror, she never has to wonder why her father looked at her like a question mark."
May you like
Elias covered his face with his hands and wept.
***
