Part Two: What the Driveway Heard
Barbara recovered fast — she always did. "That's nothing. A misunderstanding. Emily, I assume this is your doing?"
"No," I said, one hand on Ellie's shoulder. "This is yours."
Melissa's mouth went tight. "You've been spying on us?"
Ellie looked at her aunt, unbothered. "You were talking really loud in Grandma's driveway. I was waiting in the car."
That was the first crack. Melissa's face changed — not guilt exactly, but the look of someone watching a wall she'd built for years develop a hairline fracture.
Daniel turned on his sister. "What did you do?"
"Don't look at me like that," Melissa snapped. "I protected this family."
"From what?"
Barbara slammed her palm on the table. "Enough."
But Daniel wasn't listening to his mother anymore. He dumped the rest of the envelope onto the tablecloth — more photographs, a folded lab report, screenshots, a pharmacy receipt, a printed email from a private testing lab. His eyes moved down the page and stopped.
Not on Ellie's name.
On Ava's. Then Grace's.
"What is this?" he said, and his voice had gone somewhere far away.
Melissa lunged for the papers, but Ellie was quicker — she grabbed her phone and held it to her chest like a shield. "I copied everything."
"You little brat," Barbara hissed.
Daniel stepped between them before I could. "Don't you ever call my daughter that."
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"She isn't the one you should be worried about!" Barbara shouted, and something in her voice cracked open — not anger anymore. Fear.
At the end of the table, Kevin — Melissa's husband, who had barely said a word all evening — set down his glass very slowly, like it had suddenly become too heavy to hold.
