“What was I supposed to feel?”
There it was again.
Feel.
Her resentment had always begun as feeling.
Then became action.
She stepped toward Andre.
“Aisha’s father leaves Nia millions.”
“Your company shares go partly into her trust.”
“Her college is paid.”
“Her future is guaranteed.”
“And what do Caleb and Ava get?”
Andre stared.
“Parents who are alive.”
Vanessa stopped.
The sentence filled the room.
Andre continued.
“They get you.”
“They get me.”
“They did not have to watch their mother die.”
“They did not spend their seventh birthday in a hospital room.”
“They did not stand beside a coffin while adults told them to be strong.”
His voice cracked.
“If you want to compare what Nia has to what they have, start there.”
Vanessa began crying harder.
“I never said I wanted Aisha dead.”
“No.”
“But you resented what she left behind.”
“I wanted fairness.”
“Fairness?”
Andre pointed toward the kitchen.
“Rice for one child and roast chicken for two?”
“That is your fairness?”
Vanessa whispered:
“I lost perspective.”
“You lost humanity.”
She flinched.
Andre immediately regretted the cruelty of the sentence.
Then he remembered Nia’s fifteen-pound weight loss.
He let it stand.
Vanessa looked at Nia.
“I’m sorry.”
Nia stared at the floor.
Vanessa moved forward.
Andre blocked her.
“Enough.”
Vanessa looked at him.
“What happens now?”
Andre exhaled.
“You leave tonight.”
Her expression emptied.
“This is my home.”
“The children stay.”
“You are not taking my children.”
“They are my children too.”
Caleb and Ava were Andre and Vanessa’s biological children.
That fact now carried weight Andre had never imagined it would need.
Vanessa stared.
“You cannot keep them from me.”
“I’m not making a permanent decision at one in the morning.”
“I’m saying tonight they are asleep, safe, and staying in their beds.”
“And tomorrow lawyers can tell us what happens next.”
“You already called lawyers?”
“I called mine from the hospital.”
Vanessa looked toward Nia.
“You reported me.”
Andre said:
“The hospital reported you.”
Her face twisted.
“You let them.”
“Yes.”
The word came without hesitation.
Vanessa sank onto the sofa.
For several seconds she looked smaller.
Andre remembered loving her.
That complicated everything.
He remembered their wedding.
Ava’s birth.
Caleb learning to walk.
Vanessa staying beside him through a business crisis.
The nights she held him when anniversaries of Aisha’s death became unexpectedly difficult.
People wanted cruelty to erase love retroactively.
It did not.
Andre had loved Vanessa.
Some part of him still did.
That made the truth more painful, not less.
He said quietly:
“Your sister is coming.”
Vanessa looked up.
“What?”
“I called her.”
“She’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“You arranged this.”
“Yes.”
“You knew before we talked.”
“I knew after I saw the documents.”
Vanessa stood.
“You don’t even want to hear why.”
“I heard why.”