Chapter 14 - Melissa's Breakdown
At four o'clock that afternoon, Claire was standing inside Ethan’s old workshop behind their home.
The workshop smelled of cedar sawdust, motor oil, and linseed—scents that brought Ethan back to her so vividly that her chest ached with a physical, bruising pain. On the pegboard wall hung his neatly organized tools, each silhouette traced in black marker. In the corner sat Noah’s little wooden balance bike, half-sanded, the sandpaper still resting on the crossbar where Ethan had left it on the morning of July 13th.
The side door of the workshop creaked open.
Claire didn't turn around immediately. She could hear the frantic, ragged breathing of the intruder.
"Claire."
Claire turned.
Melissa stood in the doorway. She had walked from the bus stop three miles away—her car had been repossessed from the driveway at two o'clock. Her designer boots were ruined, soaked through with dirty slush. Her mascara had run down her cheeks in black streaks, her hands red and swollen from the freezing rain.
She looked like a ghost that had wandered out of a wreckage.
"How did you get here, Melissa?" Claire asked quietly.
"I walked," Melissa sobbed, her voice trembling, stripping away every ounce of pride she had ever possessed. "Carter blocked me. His family threatened to take out a restraining order if I came near their house. Mom is sitting on the floor in the living room staring at the wall. Dad... Dad locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of gin."
Claire remained silent, her hands resting in the pockets of Ethan’s work jacket.
Melissa dropped to her knees on the cold concrete floor of the workshop, right beside Noah’s unfinished wooden bike.
"Please, Claire," Melissa wept, bowing her head until her forehead touched the dusty concrete. "I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll go on TV. I’ll make a video. I’ll tell everyone that I was a monster. I’ll tell them you were right about everything. Just... don't take the house. Don't let them arrest Daddy. I don't have anywhere to go. I don't know how to do anything."
Claire looked down at her sister.
For thirty years, Claire had cleaned up Melissa’s messes. When Melissa failed her high school math classes, Claire tutored her until two in the morning. When Melissa backed her car into a parked vehicle in college and panicked, Claire drove across the state line to handle the insurance exchange. When Melissa wanted Claire’s bedroom because it had a larger closet, their parents forced Claire to move into the attic, and Claire had swallowed the insult in silence to keep the peace.
"Look at me, Melissa," Claire said.
Melissa lifted her tear-streaked face, her eyes wild with a child’s desperate hope that the older sister would fix the broken toy one last time.
"On Friday, July fourteenth," Claire said, her voice dropping into that chilling, unshakeable calm, "I was in the basement morgue of the Medical Examiner’s office in Richmond."
Melissa flinched, shrinking back slightly.
"The coroner told me that Ethan’s body was recognizable only by the silver watch I gave him for our fifth anniversary," Claire continued, each word falling like an iron weight. "Then he took me into a smaller room. He pulled back two white sheets. Lily’s face was untouched, Melissa. She looked like she was sleeping, except her skin was as cold as a kitchen tile. Noah’s chest had been crushed by the seatbelt harness. His hand was so cold when I held it."
Melissa began to shake her head, covering her ears. "Please, Claire... don't... please..."
"I called you," Claire whispered. "I called your cell phone while I was sitting outside that room on a plastic chair. You answered, laughed, and told me you couldn't talk because the waiter had just brought out the chocolate lava cake with the sparklers."
"I didn't know!" Melissa wailed. "I didn't understand how bad it was!"
"You didn't care," Claire said. "Because nobody in that family has ever cared about anything that doesn't reflect back in a mirror."
Claire walked over to the side door, pushed it open, and pointed out toward the falling dusk.
"Get off my property, Melissa."
"Claire—"
"Get out."
Melissa looked into Claire’s eyes and saw the absolute, terrifying truth: the sister she had known—the gentle, accommodating, forgiving Claire—was buried in Oakwood Cemetery beside three copper caskets.
The woman standing before her was an executioner.
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Melissa scrambled to her feet, stumbling through the doorway into the freezing rain, her ragged sobs swallowed by the howling winter wind as she vanished down the gravel lane.
***
