Chapter 6 - The Family Member Who Finally Said She Was Sorry
Three days later, Daniel’s cousin Erin called Sophie.
They had not spoken since the birthday dinner.
“I should’ve called you sooner.”
Sophie stood at the window of her temporary apartment.
“Yes.”
Erin inhaled.
“I’m sorry.”
Sophie said nothing.
“I sat there while Vanessa showed those messages.”
“Yes.”
“And I believed her.”
“Yes.”
Erin’s voice tightened.
“She had shown me one before dinner.”
Sophie turned from the window.
“When?”
“Two days earlier.”
“What did it say?”
“Something about you keeping Daniel calm until Boston.”
Sophie remembered the screenshot.
“Why did she show you?”
“She said she wanted advice.”
“That sounds like Vanessa.”
“She also asked me whether you’d ever talked about leaving Daniel.”
Sophie’s skin prickled.
“When?”
“A month before the birthday.”
That was before Vanessa claimed to have discovered the full conversation.
“What did you say?”
“That married people complain sometimes and it didn’t mean anything.”
Erin paused.
“Then Vanessa said something weird.”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Sophie thinks Daniel can become somebody else if she gets him away from this family.’”
Sophie remembered telling her college friend Maya almost exactly that in an email.
Not about changing Daniel into somebody else.
About giving him enough distance from Vanessa to learn what he wanted without consulting her first.
Vanessa had read it.
Erin continued.
“I thought she was being dramatic.”
“She was building a story.”
“I know that now.”
Sophie sat down.
“Did Vanessa ever say why Boston bothered her so much?”
Erin laughed quietly.
“Because Daniel was going to go.”
“What?”
“He told me in February that if you got the job and wanted it, he’d try Boston for a year.”
Sophie felt a sharp ache.
Daniel had told her the opposite.
He had said relocating would create too much conflict with family and work.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. He sounded nervous, but kind of excited.”
Something had changed between February and the time Sophie actually received the offer.
Vanessa’s warning had begun in March.
The timeline was becoming almost painfully simple.
Boston did not threaten Daniel’s marriage.
It threatened Vanessa’s access to Daniel.
Sophie hated the thought because it sounded petty.
Then she remembered fifteen years of family photographs.
Vanessa beside Daniel at graduation.
Vanessa helping him move into college.
Vanessa front row at every milestone.
Vanessa calling herself his “backup parent” as a joke.
She had loved him.
That was probably true.
Love did not prevent control.
Sometimes it gave control better language.
That evening Daniel texted Sophie.
Vanessa keeps calling. I’m not answering.
Sophie typed three different responses.
Deleted all of them.
Finally she wrote:
Don’t stop answering her for me.
Daniel responded:
I’m not.
Then:
I need to figure out who I am when I’m not asking her what I’m supposed to think.
Sophie stared at that sentence.
May you like
It was the first thing he had said since the confrontation that sounded like it might belong entirely to him.
But it came years too late to make trust return on command.
