Chapter 4: Three Years of Quiet Sabotage
That night, after everyone had gone home, Daniel and I sat at the kitchen table with Marcus.
Marcus is thirty-one, quiet, works in IT.
He's not the type to insert himself into family drama.
When he set his phone on the table between us and pressed play, he looked almost apologetic about it.
Megan's voice came out of the speaker clearly.
*"Okay, you know what Aunt Megan needs you to do.
Just like we practiced.
The silver one in the driveway.
Both of you.
Don't stop until I come get you."*
Then the sound of small feet on gravel.
Then the bat.
Daniel didn't move for a long time after Marcus stopped the recording.
"She practiced it with them," he said.
"Yes," Marcus said.
"Before the barbecue."
"That's what it sounds like."
Daniel stood up and walked to the window.
He stood there with his back to us, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall once, slowly.
"How long have you known she was like this?" I asked Marcus.
Marcus looked at the phone.
"There's something else I should probably tell you."
He pulled up a series of text messages and slid the phone across to me.
The messages were between Megan and someone saved in his contacts as *D* — and from the number, I already knew who it was.
The first message was from fourteen months ago.
*D: She's applying for the marketing director position at Harlow & Reed.
I thought you should know.*
*Megan: Perfect.
I'll make a call.*
I read it twice.
Then I looked up at Marcus.
"What position?" I said.
"The one you didn't get," he said carefully.
"About a year ago.
You told Daniel the hiring manager said the role had been filled internally."
I remembered.
I'd been devastated.
That job would have meant a significant salary increase.
We'd been counting on it to speed up paying off my mother's medical bills.
When I didn't get it, I told myself it wasn't meant to be.
"Megan called someone at that company?" Daniel said from the window.
He'd turned around.
"Her ex-boyfriend manages one of the departments there," Marcus said.
"I don't know exactly what she said.
But I know she made the call the day after Diane told her you'd applied."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"That's not the only one," Marcus said.
He reached over and scrolled further up in the messages.
"There's one from two years ago.
A rental property you and Daniel were trying to lease for the photography studio."
I felt something cold move through me.
"The landlord called and said the space had been taken," I said slowly.
"It hadn't been," Marcus said.
"It sat empty for four more months.
I drove past it.
I thought it was strange at the time."
Daniel came back to the table.
He sat down.
He looked at the phone like it was something he didn't want to touch.
"She's been doing this for years," he said.
"At least three that I can trace," Marcus said.
"Maybe longer."
I thought about the job I didn't get.
The studio space that slipped away.
The months of my mother's treatment when money had been tightest.
The car we'd saved three years to buy, now sitting in the driveway with a cracked windshield and a caved-in door.
None of it had been bad luck.
"Why?" Daniel said.
He wasn't asking Marcus.
He was asking the room.
"Because she could," I said.
"And because no one ever stopped her."
Marcus picked up his phone.
"I want you to have this recording.
And I can forward you the screenshots.
But I need you to know — I should have said something sooner.
I saw some of this happening and I told myself it wasn't my place."
"You're saying something now," I said.
He nodded.
But he didn't look relieved.
After he left, Daniel and I sat at the table for a long time without talking.
The kitchen light hummed.
Outside, the neighborhood was quiet.
"I want to call my mother," Daniel said finally.
I looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because I think she knows more than she's told us.
And I think it's time she said it out loud."
May you like
I didn't argue.
But I already had a feeling that whatever his mother knew was going to make everything we'd learned tonight feel like the easy part.
