Chapter 3 - MY SISTER’S PART IN THE POISON
Anthony was arrested that morning.
The police seized his phone, the medicine bottle, the unsigned power-of-attorney documents, and two laptops from the apartment.
Elise was taken separately for questioning.
I spent the rest of the day at the hospital.
Dr. Bell explained that the compounded drops contained a steroid and another agent that repeatedly inflamed the healing tissue around my eyes.
“The damage could have become permanent,” she said.
“Did Anthony know that?”
She hesitated.
“The pharmacy instructions warned against long-term use.”
I closed my eyes.
Darkness returned behind my eyelids.
For two years, I had believed darkness was the consequence of an accident.
Now I knew someone had been maintaining it.
My original injury came from a car crash on the FDR Drive. A truck ran a red light and struck the passenger side of our car.
Anthony was driving.
He walked away with minor injuries.
Glass damaged both my eyes.
Doctors always believed I would eventually recover.
Anthony never told me that part.
He said the prognosis was poor.
He said I should prepare for a permanently blind life.
He said hope would only make me suffer more.
My mother sat beside the hospital bed, holding my hand.
“I should have known.”
“How?”
“He stopped letting me attend appointments.”
“He said you overwhelmed me.”
“He told me you blamed me for the accident.”
I opened my eyes.
“I never said that.”
Her face crumpled.
“I thought you wanted distance.”
That was how Anthony worked.
He did not remove people from my life all at once.
He gave each of us a different reason to stay away.
To Mom, he said I needed quiet.
To friends, he said visitors exhausted me.
To gallery employees, he said I could not tolerate discussions about work.
To Elise, he claimed I hated her for remaining healthy.
He built walls using our own fears.
Then he stood in the center and called himself my protector.
The next morning, Detective Nina Alvarez came to the hospital.
“Your sister asked to speak with you.”
“Is she under arrest?”
“Not currently. She is cooperating.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“We are still determining her level of involvement.”
I agreed to meet Elise in a hospital conference room.
She entered wearing borrowed clothes, no makeup, and the expression of someone who had spent the night learning that guilt does not disappear when the person you betrayed survives.
She sat across from me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Start with the truth.”
Her lips trembled.
“Anthony and I began seeing each other three years ago.”
“Before the crash.”
“Yes.”
“Did you plan it?”
She looked horrified.
“No.”
“Did Anthony?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think carefully.”
Elise twisted her fingers together.
“The night before the crash, he said he wished something would happen that forced you to depend on him.”
My body went cold.
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said you were becoming too powerful. Mom planned to give you more control of the gallery. Your investments were doing well. He said you had started noticing irregularities in his real estate accounts.”
I remembered.
Two weeks before the accident, I found a transfer from our joint investment account into an unfamiliar corporation.
Anthony told me it was part of a property deal.
I had planned to review the documents.
I never got the chance.
“Did he cause the crash?”
“He always said the truck ran the light.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Elise began crying.
“I found messages after the accident. Anthony had been communicating with the truck driver.”
Detective Alvarez, seated near the door, leaned forward.
“Do you still have them?”
Elise nodded.
“I copied everything to a flash drive.”
“Why?”
“Because I became afraid of him.”
I stared at my sister.
“But you stayed.”
“He said if I left, he would prove I helped plan the crash.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“You helped poison me.”
She flinched.
“I knew about the drops.”
“You watched him give them to me.”
“He said they only slowed your recovery.”
“That was acceptable to you?”
Tears ran down her face.
“No.”
“You slept in my home, wore my clothes, drank from my cups, and listened while he described how dependent I was.”
She looked down.
“I hated you.”
The honesty silenced the room.
“Why?”
“Because Mom trusted you with the gallery. Because Dad respected you. Because every time I made a mistake, everyone said I should be more like Matilda.”
“So you helped destroy me.”
“At first, I wanted to take something from you.”
She wiped her face.
“Then Anthony started controlling me too. He monitored my phone. He handled my money. He told me what to say when you asked about me.”
“You want me to feel sorry for you.”
“No.”
She met my eyes.
“I want you to understand that I knew what he was doing was wrong, and I stayed because I wanted the life he promised me.”
I respected the truth more than I wanted to.
Detective Alvarez asked, “Where is the flash drive?”
Elise hesitated.
“In Mom’s gallery.”
My mother stared at her.
“Where?”
“Inside Dad’s old office. Behind the portrait storage wall.”
Mom’s face changed.
“That wall was sealed after he died.”
Elise nodded.
“Anthony opened it last year.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad left something hidden there.”
I looked at Mom.
My father had died six years earlier after a sudden heart attack in his office.
Anthony had been with him that afternoon.
“What did Dad hide?” I asked.
Elise looked toward the detective.
“Proof that Anthony had been stealing from the gallery before he married Matilda.”
The room became still.
Anthony’s plan had not begun with my blindness.
May you like
It had not even begun with our marriage.
It had begun with my father.
