Chapter 3 - THE CHILD JESSICA HAD BEEN ALLOWED TO BECOME
Jessica stayed at the Atlanta house that night.
Margaret’s access code was disabled.
The locks were reprogrammed.
Her garage remote was deactivated.
Ryan did all of it without calling her first.
That was new.
At midnight, Emily finally slept.
Ryan found Jessica at the kitchen island.
The specimen jar had remained at the hospital for possible testing.
Jessica was drinking tea.
Ryan sat opposite her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She laughed softly.
“I did.”
“When?”
“When I was twelve.”
“I was seven.”
“When I was sixteen.”
Ryan frowned.
“When I came home from college.”
His face tightened.
“When Dad died.”
Daniel had died eight years earlier in North Carolina.
Ryan attended the funeral.
Margaret did not.
Jessica continued:
“You always had an explanation.”
Ryan stared at her.
“I remember you being sick a lot.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You had panic attacks.”
“Yes.”
“Mom took care of you.”
Jessica smiled without humor.
“That’s what she called it.”
Ryan looked down.
His childhood suddenly felt unreliable.
Margaret had always described Jessica as difficult.
Sensitive.
Dramatic.
Their mother said Ryan was the easy child.
The dependable one.
Jessica was the problem that had to be managed.
At family dinners, Margaret praised Ryan’s grades while discussing Jessica’s “episodes” in front of relatives.
People laughed gently when Jessica objected.
Ryan sometimes laughed too.
He remembered one Christmas when their uncle asked whether Jessica would ever make it through dinner without “one of her performances.”
Margaret smiled.
Jessica left the table.
Nobody followed.
Ryan felt sick.
“How often did she give you that stuff?”
Jessica shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“You drank it voluntarily?”
“At first.”
“And after?”
Jessica looked directly at him.
“She held my nose once.”
Ryan went completely still.
“I bit her.”
A faint smile appeared.
“She told everybody that proved how disturbed I was.”
Ryan covered his mouth.
For years, he had admired his mother for surviving a chaotic divorce and raising two children alone.
Jessica had spent those same years remembering something else.
A mother who needed everyone to believe one child could not be trusted.
“You think she was trying to drug Emily?”
Jessica shook her head.
“Don’t use a bigger word than we can prove.”
Ryan looked surprised.
“She was forcing something on a pregnant woman.”
“Yes.”
Jessica’s voice hardened.
“That’s enough.”
She leaned forward.
“Mom always wins when everyone starts arguing about whether she’s secretly evil.”
“What do you mean?”
“She doesn’t think she’s evil.”
May you like
Jessica looked toward the hallway where Emily slept.
“She thinks she has the right to make people manageable.”
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