Chapter 10
Julian confronted Vanessa without me.
Then asked me to join halfway through.
I found them in the aquarium gallery beneath a wall of slow-moving sharks.
Appropriate.
Vanessa had been crying.
Julian looked exhausted.
“She says she loved me.”
I sat down.
Vanessa looked at me desperately.
“I did.”
I believed her.
That was possible.
Love does not prevent cowardice.
“What did you love?”
She stared.
“Julian.”
“No.”
I leaned back.
“What about him?”
Silence.
His name.
His house.
His protection.
The way doors opened.
The way being pregnant with his son transformed how older Lombardis looked at her.
Vanessa finally whispered:
“He made me feel safe.”
There.
Closer.
“And when he was going to leave?”
“I panicked.”
“So you invented a baby.”
“Yes.”
Julian flinched.
Then she said the cruelest thing yet.
“I only meant it to last a few weeks.”
My son stared.
“What changed?”
“Diane.”
Of course.
“She said if I stopped, I’d lose you and look insane.”
Probably true.
“She said if I continued, I could become family.”
That word.
Family.
The most abused word in our world.
Julian looked at her.
“You already were close to becoming family.”
She cried harder.
“I didn’t feel it.”
Then I understood something.
Vanessa had seen Avice’s automatic belonging and envied it.
A three-year-old had what she desperately wanted without performing.
A surname.
A grandfather’s chair.
A father who loved her even when distracted.
Vanessa turned that envy downward.
She could not challenge Diane.
Could not control Julian.
Could control Avice.
So she told the child the new baby would take her place.
Cruelty travels easiest toward whoever has less power.
I looked at her.
“You were frightened of losing Julian.”
“Yes.”
“So you frightened his daughter.”
She closed her eyes.
No defense.
Good.
Julian whispered:
“I don’t know how to forgive this.”
I looked at him.
“You don’t need to decide tonight.”
May you like
Not every pain needs immediate closure.
Sometimes forcing resolution is just another form of discomfort avoidance.
