Chapter 3 - The Untouched Ledger
Victoria’s entire expression melted in an instant, shifting with terrifying speed from a cruel, sneering queen bee into a picture of innocent, put-upon domesticity.
“Oh, Aunt Helen!” Victoria trilled, stepping forward with a bright, manufactured smile that didn't reach her eyes. “You’re early! We weren't expecting you for another half hour.”
She fluttered her hands nervously, glancing back toward the kitchen counter. “My sister was just dropping off the cake. She was actually just heading out—she has somewhere else she needs to be.”
Janet let out a nervous, high-pitched giggle from the couch. “Yeah, she was just saying how sick she is of pretending to like her sister.”
The words hung in the air like a foul odor. The entire living room seemed to hold its breath. Even the late-arrival guests standing in the entryway stopped pulling off their coats, sensing the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure.
Aunt Helen didn't smile. She slowly lowered the gift bag to her side, her gloved hand tightening around the paper handle. Her gaze drifted from Janet, past Chloe, and landed squarely on Victoria.
“Pretending?” Helen asked softly. Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried a razor-sharp authority that made Victoria visibly flinch.
Victoria’s manufactured smile faltered. For the first time all evening, she looked genuinely rattled, her eyes darting nervously toward the doorway where half a dozen party guests were now staring awkwardly.
“Well, you know how Maya is, Aunt Helen,” Victoria recovered quickly, her tone turning wheedling and defensive. “She always makes everything so dramatic. She brought the cake, she stayed way too long, and now she’s making a scene because we want to start the party.”
Aunt Helen didn't say a word. She slowly unbuttoned her wool coat, dropped it over the back of the entryway chair with deliberate slowness, and walked past the cluster of frozen guests into the kitchen.
She didn't look at Victoria. Instead, she walked straight up to the kitchen counter, looked down at the mangled, smeared fondant rose on top of the two-tier cake, and then looked up at me.
My face was burning, my eyes stinging with hot, angry tears that I refused to let fall. Helen saw the dark circles under my eyes, the flour smudges on my wrists, and the rigid, defensive posture of someone standing alone in a room full of wolves.
Then, Helen turned her head very slowly back toward Victoria.
Her expression was calm. Dangerously calm.
“Victoria,” Aunt Helen began, her voice steady and clear in the silent apartment. “Before your sister leaves, perhaps you can explain something to me.”
Victoria crossed her arms defensively, her chin lifting. “Explain what? What did I do?”
Helen tilted her head, her sharp eyes narrowing.
“You mean the sister who pays half your rent every single month because you couldn't possibly afford this luxury high-rise apartment on your own?”
The silence that followed was absolute. You could have heard a pin drop on the marble floor.
Victoria’s face drained of every trace of color, turning a pasty, sickly white. Her mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out.
Across the living room, Chloe choked on her Pinot Noir, coughing violently as her eyes bulged out of her head. Becca and Janet exchanged panicked, wide-eyed glances, their collective sophistication evaporating into thin air.
“Aunt Helen, what are you talking about?” Victoria stammered, her voice pitching up an octave in sudden, genuine panic. “That’s—that’s not true. I pay my own rent!”
Helen let out a dry, humorless laugh. She reached into her leather handbag, pulled out a worn leather checkbook wallet, and tossed a small white envelope directly onto the quartz counter, right next to the ruined cake.
“Don't insult my intelligence, Victoria,” Helen said, her voice dropping into a register of icy, controlled fury. “Your landlord, Mr. Henderson, is an old bowling buddy of your late uncle’s. When he called me three weeks ago to ask why the automatic bank transfer for unit 14B was splitting between two different checking accounts—one belonging to Victoria Vance and the other belonging to Maya Vance—I had to do a little digging.”
Helen stepped closer to Victoria, backing her up against the edge of the kitchen island.
“Did you honestly think your sister’s financial support was some magical mystery subsidy? Did you think money just fell out of the sky every month to cover your terrace view and your granite countertops?”
Victoria was shaking now, her carefully constructed facade completely crumbling into dust. “I—she wanted to help! She insisted!”
“She insisted because you cried poverty every time the quarterly bills arrived!” Helen snapped, her voice cracking the silence like a whip. “She took on freelance design work until her eyes bled, she gave up her own car repairs, and she lived on instant ramen so you could play socialite with girls who wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire!”
The guests in the hallway began whispering nervously. One of them slowly backed out the front door, pulling their partner by the sleeve.
I stood motionless, watching the woman who had terrorized my self-esteem for the past two hours shrink into a pathetic, cornered child.
“And that isn't even the half of it,” Helen continued, turning her cold gaze toward the living room rug where my green linen scrapbook still lay open on the coffee table. She walked over, picked it up with two fingers as if it were a biohazard, and carried it back into the kitchen, setting it down gently right beside the ruined cake.
Helen opened the cover, flipping to the page where Chloe had mocked my handwriting earlier.
“This book,” Helen said, looking around the room at the stunned, silent crowd of “real friends,” “this book represents three months of your sister’s life, Victoria. Do you have any idea what Maya was doing while you were out drinking wine with these parasites?”
Victoria pressed her back against the counter, tears of sheer humiliation finally spilling over her mascara-stained eyelashes. “Stop it, Aunt Helen! You’re ruining my birthday!”
“Your birthday?” Helen scoffed, a look of profound disgust crossing her face. “You don't even know what a family is, Victoria. You’ve spent the last six years treating your sister like a domestic servant and a financial ATM while parading around like a spoiled princess.”
May you like
Helen turned to me, her expression softening instantly, the hard edges of her anger melting into deep, protective warmth. She reached out, placing a trembling, warm hand over my flour-dusted fingers.
“Come on, Maya,” Helen said gently. “Grab your things. You’re coming home with me. We are going to have real cake, and you are going to sleep in a bed that doesn't smell like cheap perfume and hypocrisy.”
