PART 2: THE LIE SHE TOLD BEFORE WE WOKE
I wanted to reach for Chloe, but the space between our beds felt impossibly wide.
“Don’t move,” she whispered.
Even now, she was worried about me.
Edric took one step toward her.
The door opened before he could take another.
Dr. Cooper returned with two security guards. One stayed beside the doorway. The other moved between Edric and our beds.
“Sir, come into the hallway.”
Edric smiled.
It was the smile he used with neighbors, delivery drivers, anyone whose opinion might matter later.
“Of course. There’s obviously been some misunderstanding.”
He turned toward us.
“Girls. Tell the doctor what happened.”
My body reacted before my mind could.
My shoulders tightened. My eyes dropped. Somewhere inside me, a familiar voice began reciting the rules.
Don’t contradict him.
Don’t make him repeat himself.
Don’t let Chloe pay for something you said.
Then Chloe spoke.
“We didn’t fall.”
Edric stopped smiling.
Three words.
We had whispered hundreds to each other in the dark, but those were the first three she had ever said where someone else could hear.
Brenda stepped toward her bed.
“Sweetheart, you’re confused. You hit your head.”
Dr. Cooper moved into her path.
“I need you to wait outside, too.”
“I’m their mother.”
“And right now, they need treatment.”
Edric’s gaze found mine over the guard’s shoulder.
For one terrible moment, we were back in our kitchen.
He didn’t have to speak. I knew the warning.
Then the guard moved, blocking him from my view.
The door closed.
Nobody turned up a television.
Nobody told us we had brought this on ourselves.
A nurse pulled a chair beside my bed.
“My name is Elena,” she said. “Would you like me to stay here?”
I stared at her.
She waited for an answer.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Only then did she sit.
That was when I began to cry.
Not loudly. I couldn’t manage loudly.
Tears simply slid into my hair while Elena kept her chair exactly where she had promised.
They took us for scans separately.
Before they wheeled Chloe away, she caught the edge of my blanket.
“Don’t let them take you home.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise.”
I wanted to give her something stronger than a promise. A locked door. A different childhood. Our father standing in the hallway with his old brown jacket and his car keys.
“I promise.”
By the time I returned, a woman in plain clothes was waiting near my bed.
She introduced herself as Detective Lena Ortiz and asked whether I felt able to answer a few questions.
“Where’s Chloe?”
“Still being examined. A nurse is with her.”
“My mother?”
“Outside this treatment area.”
“Can she hear us?”
“No.”
I looked at the door anyway.
Ortiz noticed.
She moved her chair so I could see past her.
“You can ask to stop whenever you need to.”
At first, I told her almost nothing.
His name.
Our address.
That it had happened before.
Each answer felt dangerous after it left my mouth.
Then she asked, “What happened tonight?”
I looked down at my hands.
“Chloe tried to protect me.”
Ortiz waited.
“He hurt her. I tried to stop him.”
My breathing shortened.
Elena leaned forward.
“Take your time, Faye.”
“There are recordings,” I said.
Ortiz’s pen stopped.
I looked at her.
“An old phone. Under a floorboard in our bedroom. Beside the heating vent.”
“Does anyone else know it’s there?”
“Chloe.”
“Are the recordings only on that phone?”
I shook my head.
“They upload when the internet works. To an account my dad made.”
For the first time since we arrived, I saw a way for the truth to leave this room without depending on whether anyone believed my voice.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t let him go home and find it.”
Ortiz stood and spoke quietly to an officer outside.
When she came back, her manner had changed. She was still gentle, but each question now had somewhere specific to go.
Did I know the account password?
When had I last checked an upload?
Had anyone threatened us about telling?
I answered until my head began to throb.
Then a voice rose in the hallway.
Brenda.
“You need to understand that Faye has always had a problem with authority.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“She invents things,” my mother continued. “And her sister goes along with whatever she says.”
Ortiz closed the door.
But I had already heard enough.
There it was.
The story they had prepared for us.
Unstable.
Dishonest.
Identical girls with identical lies.
“My mother knew,” I said.
The detective sat down again.
“What did she know?”
“Everything.”
The word came out so quietly I almost didn’t hear it.
“She brought us ice afterward. She washed the clothes. She told us which sleeves to wear.”
Elena looked down for a moment.
I kept going because stopping suddenly seemed worse.
“Once, I asked her to call Uncle Alan. She said he had enough problems without us embarrassing the family.”
“Do you have a way to contact him?”
“I know his email.”
Ortiz wrote it down.
Then I caught her wrist.
Gently, but urgently.
“Don’t use the number in my mother’s phone.”
“Why?”
“Because she told us he changed it. After that, every message we sent came back sounding like her.”
Ortiz held my gaze.
“All right.”
A little later, Chloe returned.
They positioned our beds close enough that we could touch hands without pulling at the tubes and wires.
She looked exhausted.
But when I curled my fingers around hers, she squeezed.
“I told her,” I whispered.
“About the phone?”
“Yes.”
Chloe shut her eyes.
For several seconds, I thought she had fallen asleep.
Then she said, “There’s something else.”
Ortiz moved closer.
Chloe looked toward the door.
“Can our mom come back in?”
“Do you want her here?” Ortiz asked.
Chloe shook her head so hard she winced.
“No.”
“Then I’ll make sure the staff know that.”
Chloe swallowed.
“Last week, she brought papers into our room.”
I turned toward her.
“What papers?”
“You were in the shower.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“She said they were for your appointments. She wanted me to sign your name.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“My appointments?”
Chloe nodded.
“I said you could sign them yourself. She got angry.”
“What did the papers say?” Ortiz asked.
“I didn’t understand most of it.”
“Anything you remember could help.”
Chloe stared at our joined hands.
“There was a sentence about Faye not being able to manage money.”
For a moment, the steady beeping beside my bed was the only sound I could hear.
Our birthday was six weeks away.
Six weeks until we turned eighteen.
Six weeks until the money Edric kept asking about was supposed to become available to us under Dad’s trust.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I refused.”
“Chloe—”
“She said if I loved you, I would help her take care of you.”
My sister’s voice cracked.
“I didn’t sign, Faye. I promise.”
“I believe you.”
I said it immediately.
I needed her to hear those words without waiting for them.
Ortiz asked whether Chloe had seen the papers again.
“No. Mom put them back in her blue folder.”
“The one in her purse?” I asked.
Chloe nodded.
Our mother had been holding that purse when we arrived.
She had kept it pressed against her body while Dr. Cooper examined us.
Ortiz rose.
“I’m going to speak with my colleague.”
Before she reached the door, her phone vibrated.
She checked the screen, stepped outside, and returned several minutes later.
“We reached your uncle.”
Chloe began crying before Ortiz finished the sentence.
“He’s asking to speak to you. Are you both up to that?”
I nodded.
Ortiz placed the call on speaker.
For a moment, there was only a faint hiss.
Then a voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a year said, “Faye? Chloe?”
“Uncle Alan?”
“Oh, girls.”
His breath caught.
I had imagined that moment so many times. I thought I would explain everything clearly. I thought I would be brave enough to spare him the worst.
Instead, I said, “We tried to call.”
“I know that now.”
“Mom said you didn’t want—”
“No.”
His voice broke on the word.
“No, sweetheart. Never.”
Chloe covered her mouth.
Alan took a breath.
“I’m coming. I’m arranging it now.”
“Did you get our messages?” I asked.
“Not for months. Your mother said you wanted space. Then she said you’d changed your numbers.”
Ortiz leaned forward.
“Mr. Morgan, there may also be an issue involving documents related to the girls’ finances.”
Silence.
Then Alan said, “What documents?”
Chloe explained the blue folder.
Halfway through, he interrupted.
“Detective, Brenda called me yesterday.”
Ortiz picked up her pen.
“What did she say?”
“She said Faye had become dangerous. She wanted me to support an application giving her continued authority after the girls turned eighteen.”
My hand went cold in Chloe’s.
“What did you tell her?” Ortiz asked.
“That I wouldn’t agree to anything without speaking to them privately. I told her I was contacting David’s attorney.”
Yesterday.
He had told her yesterday.
And tonight, Edric had hurt us badly enough that even our mother couldn’t keep us out of a hospital.
Before I could speak, someone knocked.
An officer entered carrying a blue folder inside a clear evidence bag.
Ortiz ended the call after promising Alan an update, then stepped aside to speak with him.
I couldn’t hear everything.
Just a few words.
“Provided voluntarily.”
“Mother’s statement.”
“Already signed.”
Ortiz returned to my bedside.
“Faye, I need to ask you about something.”
She held a page where I could see it.
My name was written at the bottom.
The letters looked almost right.
But I had never seen that paper in my life.
“I didn’t sign it.”
“All right.”
I stared at the date.
Then at the paragraph above the signature.
According to that page, I had attacked Chloe.
Edric had only intervened to protect her.
My mother had brought a written explanation of tonight’s injuries to the emergency room.
And the date beside my forged signature was yesterday….
