Chapter 4 - Why Helen Wanted Lily
“What does your mother want with my daughter?”
Richard didn’t answer.
So I walked toward the house.
He blocked me.
“Move.”
“Maya, listen.”
“Move.”
“If you call anyone before you understand what’s happening, Mom will destroy every piece of evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
He lowered his voice.
“My father didn’t die from cancer.”
That stopped me.
Edward Vance had died eight years earlier.
Pancreatic cancer, Richard said.
Fast decline.
Private funeral.
I met Richard one year later.
“What happened?”
“My sister says Dad was already dying when she disappeared.”
I frowned.
“You just said she disappeared twenty-two years ago.”
“She did.”
“Your father died eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“How was he already dying fourteen years earlier?”
Richard looked at me.
“Because someone had been poisoning him slowly.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“Evelyn says Mom.”
I stared at the cellar.
Richard continued.
Evelyn was sixteen when she discovered medication being added to their father’s drinks.
She confronted Helen.
Three days later, Evelyn vanished.
The family story became runaway daughter.
Then drowned girl.
Eventually dead daughter.
No body was ever found.
“Why would Helen poison your father?”
“Money.”
Edward Vance controlled a family trust worth tens of millions.
But Helen could not inherit full control while he was alive.
After he died, she became trustee until Richard turned thirty-five.
Richard was thirty-six now.
“Then why does she still control it?”
His face changed.
Because Richard never received it.
The trust contained another condition.
If Edward had more than one living child, control had to be divided.
Evelyn’s return meant Helen’s twenty-two-year lie could collapse.
“What does Lily have to do with it?”
Richard looked ashamed.
“If Evelyn is declared legally dead, and if something happens to me…”
I understood before he finished.
“Lily becomes the next beneficiary.”
“Yes.”
Helen wasn’t merely controlling.
She was positioning herself around the trust.
I held Lily tighter.
“Has your mother threatened her?”
“No.”
“Then why did Evelyn say not to let Helen take her?”
Richard reached into his pocket.
Pulled out a folded document.
Temporary guardianship authorization.
My signature at the bottom.
Except I had never signed it.
My hands went cold.
“What is this?”
“Mom gave it to me yesterday.”
“You knew?”
“I was going to destroy it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He looked at the cellar.
“Because she said if I did, Evelyn would disappear again.”
I slapped him.
Not hard.
Not calculated.
It happened before I thought.
He didn’t react.
Maybe because he knew he deserved worse.
“You let your mother forge my signature and use your sister as leverage?”
“I was trying to buy time.”
“For who?”
“For all of you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Men like you always call cowardice strategy.”
Then Lily squirmed in my arms.
She pointed toward the cellar again.
“Lady.”
I crouched.
“What lady?”
Lily pointed at the gap.
“Lady cry.”
Then she said another word.
“Grandma.”
I froze.
Richard did too.
Lily had seen Helen near the cellar.
May you like
Recently.
And our fifteen-month-old daughter had been trying to tell me.
