Clara watched me quietly.
“I assume this is from Rebecca,” she said.
I looked up.
“You know?”
“Thomas told me everything before we became serious. Not every detail, maybe, but enough. He said he didn’t want me to hear a distorted version from someone else.”
That sounded like Thomas.
Careful. Honest. Still blaming himself.
“Then why did you want to meet me?”
Clara folded her hands around her cup.
“Because I wanted you to know. If Rebecca is trying to use me, I won’t let her. But I also thought you deserved to hear it from me, not through rumors.”
For some reason, that made my throat tighten.
“Thank you.”
“Also,” she added, a little awkwardly, “I don’t feel threatened by Thomas loving his sister. I think it’s a good sign when a man treats his family with loyalty, as long as he also has boundaries. And he does. He speaks of you with respect, not dependence. There is a difference.”
I looked down at my tea because my eyes had started to sting.
Rebecca had tried to poison something before it could bloom.
Clara had simply refused to drink it.
“You’re very calm,” I said.
She smiled faintly.
“Not always. I was angry when I read it. But anger doesn’t mean I have to become foolish.”
That one sentence made me like her completely.
We forwarded the message to the lawyer and added it to the growing file. Thomas was furious when he found out, but Clara apparently told him the same thing she told me: anger did not have to become foolish.
Rebecca’s attempts grew weaker after that.
A blocked-number call to my mother that ended the moment Robert answered instead. A message sent to Thomas’s workplace account that was immediately reported. A rumor whispered to an old acquaintance that collapsed when the acquaintance asked, “Do you have proof?”
Rebecca had once seemed dangerous because she was bold.
Now she seemed pathetic because boldness without power is only noise.
The final time I saw her was almost a year after my daughter’s birth.
It was late afternoon, and I had taken my daughter to a small park near our apartment. She was walking unsteadily by then, gripping my fingers with both hands while insisting she did not need help. Robert was supposed to meet us after work, and Thomas had threatened to stop by with a birthday present even though her birthday party was still a week away.
I was laughing as my daughter stumbled toward a pigeon when a voice spoke behind me.
“You look happy.”
I turned.
Rebecca stood near the park entrance.
For a heartbeat, fear flashed through me. Then I looked around. There were parents nearby, an elderly man walking a dog, two teenagers by the vending machine. We were not alone.
I lifted my daughter into my arms.
“Don’t come closer.”
Rebecca stopped.
She looked different. Not ruined, exactly, but stripped of the polish she once wore like armor. Her coat was plain. Her hair was tied back carelessly. There were shadows under her eyes.
“I heard Thomas is seeing someone.”
“That has nothing to do with you.”
Her gaze moved to my daughter.
“She looks like Robert.”
I held my child tighter.
“Do not talk about her.”
Rebecca’s mouth twisted.
“You really hate me.”
“Yes.”
The honesty seemed to surprise her.
She gave a short laugh.
“Most people would say they don’t.”
“I’m tired of saying polite things to people who mistake politeness for weakness.”
For a long moment, she stared at me.
Then she said, “I was supposed to have this.”
I did not answer.
“A husband. A baby. A family looking at me like I mattered.” Her voice was low now. “I thought if I married Thomas, I would finally have it. But then I saw you, and you already had all of it without trying.”
“Without trying?”
My voice sharpened.
“You think infertility treatments were nothing? You think the fear of losing hope every month was nothing? You think keeping peace with you for Thomas’s sake was nothing? You looked at the surface and decided I had stolen something from you.”
She flinched.
“I didn’t know about the treatments.”
“You didn’t care to know.”
That silenced her.
My daughter shifted in my arms and rested her head against my shoulder. Her warmth steadied me.
Rebecca looked at the ground.
“My mother says I should apologize properly.”
“Are you here because your mother told you to?”
“No.”
“Then apologize.”
Her lips parted.
No words came.
I waited.
The silence stretched.
Finally, she looked away.
“I can’t.”
“I know.”
Her eyes snapped back to mine.
“Then why ask?”
“Because I wanted you to hear yourself fail.”
Her face crumpled, not into tears, but into anger she could no longer spend.
At that moment, Robert’s voice called from behind her.
“Elizabeth.”
He walked quickly toward us, eyes fixed on Rebecca. A moment later, Thomas appeared from another path, probably having arrived early with whatever unnecessary gift he had bought. His expression hardened the moment he saw her.
Rebecca noticed them both and stepped back.
Thomas spoke first.
“Leave.”
One word.
No anger. No trembling. No leftover affection.
Just a closed door.
Rebecca looked at him for a long moment.