Chapter 12
Bianca asked to see me alone.
I refused.
Emma did not attend.
Lucy certainly did not.
Thomas sat in.
Witness.
Boundary.
Bianca looked furious.
“You’re humiliating me.”
“No.”
“You destroyed the wedding.”
“There was no wedding after breakfast.”
Her face tightened.
“I loved you.”
I believed her.
That was the difficult part.
Love and ambition can live inside the same person.
So can affection and cruelty.
Contradiction does not absolve.
“I loved Lucy too.”
“No.”
She flinched.
I corrected myself.
“You loved the version of Lucy that didn’t threaten your plans.”
Silence.
“She could have had everything.”
“Except dignity.”
“That’s dramatic.”
I stared.
“Dog bowl.”
Her face changed.
Good.
No abstraction.
No “discipline.”
No “structure.”
A bowl on the floor.
A child kneeling.
Cruelty survives by climbing into bigger words.
I kept dragging it back down.
“You wanted her moved later.”
“For everyone’s stability.”
“Dog bowl.”
She looked away.
“You wanted school reports.”
“She needed help.”
“Dog bowl.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You wanted me to believe she was unstable.”
Nothing.
“Dog bowl.”
Finally:
“Stop saying that.”
There.
The object hurt more than the strategy.
Because it could not be intellectualized.
I leaned forward.
“That is what Lucy will remember.”
Bianca’s eyes filled.
Not enough.
Maybe real.
Maybe self-pity.
Didn’t matter.
“You do not get access to her.”
Her face snapped up.
“I helped raise her.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
May you like
“You studied her.”
That ended the conversation.
