Amelia spun around at the sound of my voice, her expression shifting instantly—from anger to a soft, harmless smile. The kind of smile she’d mastered during Sunday barbeques and school meetings.
“Oh! Mark, you’re home early,” she said, her tone syrupy sweet. “We were just—”
“Stop.” I stepped into the attic, my jaw clenched. “I heard everything.”
Her smile flickered, but she held onto it. “Everything? Honey, I think you misunderstood—”
Sophie ran to me, burying her face in my shirt. Her shoulders trembled. I wrapped an arm around her, keeping my eyes on Amelia.
“You yelled at her,” I said, my voice low. “You told her to forget her mother.”
Amelia exhaled sharply, as if my accusation inconvenienced her. “She needs to move on, Mark. You’re too soft with her. You let her cry over her mother for years. It’s unhealthy.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to scream at her.”
A flash of irritation crossed her face—barely visible, but now unmistakable. “I’ve been trying to help this family,” she snapped. “I stepped into a role most women wouldn’t touch. And what do I get? Resistance. Rejection. Accusations.”
“Helping doesn’t involve emotional abuse,” I said.
Her eyes hardened. For the first time, she didn’t bother to hide it.
“This family will fall apart without structure,” she said. “Without someone who actually enforces rules. You let emotions run everything.”
I felt Sophie flinch in my arms.
“Come on,” I told her quietly. “We’re going downstairs.”
But as we moved toward the steps, Amelia stepped in front of us.
“Mark,” she said, voice crisp, urgent. “Don’t make decisions you’ll regret. I’ve invested too much into this family for you to throw it away.”
I stared at her. “Invested?”
She hesitated—just a second, but enough. A microsecond of panic. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t just insecurity or jealousy. Something deeper was running under the surface.
And then I remembered something. Two weeks earlier, I’d come home late from a work conference and found Amelia in the office at my desk—my locked desk. She’d brushed it off as looking for printer paper. Now, with Sophie trembling beside me, that memory hit differently.
“Move,” I said firmly.
Her jaw tightened, but she stepped aside.
Once downstairs, I sent Sophie to her room and grabbed my laptop bag from the closet. The lock on my desk drawer looked… scratched. Too many marks to be accidental. Inside was a folder I hadn’t touched in months—our life insurance policy documents. Lily’s old financial files. Bank statements. Everything was out of order. A pit formed in my stomach.
Why had she been in here? Why were our photo albums in the attic? Why was she pushing so hard to erase Lily?
I turned. Amelia stood in the doorway, watching me.
“You weren’t supposed to find out yet,” she said quietly.
Her voice was eerily calm, almost resigned—as if she’d reached the moment she knew was coming.
“Find out what?” I asked, pushing Sophie’s door closed behind me to keep her out of this.
Amelia stepped into the office, closing the door with a soft click. “Mark, please listen. I wasn’t trying to hurt Sophie. I wasn’t trying to replace Lily. I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
She hesitated, then reached into her purse and pulled out a folded stack of papers. She placed them on the desk. I recognized them instantly. Emails. Bank transfers. A name I didn’t expect. Lily’s estranged brother — Matt Harrison.
I felt my chest tighten. “Why do you have these?”
“Because,” she said, meeting my eyes, “your late wife was hiding something from you.”
My voice dropped. “Choose your next words carefully.”
She nodded. “Six months before Lily died, she received multiple phone calls from Matt. He wanted money. She refused. He threatened her. After she passed, he contacted me—thinking I was now an easier target. He wanted access to your accounts. I told him no. And he wasn’t happy.”
I stared at her. The story sounded insane—too convenient—but the documents in front of me were real. The emails were timestamped. The withdrawals lined up. The tone of the threats matched Matt’s personality.
“He said Sophie would be ‘leverage’ if he didn’t get what he wanted,” Amelia continued. “I didn’t want to scare you. I thought keeping her close, keeping a routine, would make her less vulnerable.” It was the first time since Lily’s death that someone made my blood run cold.
Matt had always been unstable—drug problems, multiple arrests, debts he tried to dump onto us—but Lily had always shielded Sophie from him.
Could Amelia be telling the truth?
Or was this manipulation?
“Why yell at Sophie?” I asked. “Why tell her to forget her mother?”
Amelia swallowed. “Because she mentioned seeing a man outside her school last week. A man who looked like Lily’s brother. I panicked. I tried to make her feel safe by… distancing her from the idea of her mother’s past.”
“That’s not how you make a child feel safe,” I said sharply.
She nodded. “I know. I handled it horribly. But I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I was trying to keep her hidden.”
The office felt suffocating. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, voice breaking, “I knew you still loved Lily. And I didn’t want to be the woman who brought chaos into your life.”
I sank into the chair, rubbing my forehead. Part of me felt sympathy. Another part didn’t trust her at all. Then the doorknob rattled….
Sophie stood there, face pale. “Daddy… there’s a man outside.”
I shot up. Amelia froze. I rushed to the living room window. A man leaned against a streetlight across from our house. Shaggy hair. Heavy jacket. Hands in pockets.
Matt.
My stomach dropped. Amelia’s voice was barely a whisper. “He found you.”
Everything snapped into place. The yelling. The secrecy. The fear. I locked the doors and called 911. I didn’t know yet if I could forgive Amelia. But I knew one thing: My daughter needed to be protected.
And this time—I wasn’t losing anyone.
