Chapter 2 - THE LIVESTREAM
For one second, I couldn’t breathe.
The video kept playing.
Lily sat frozen beneath a pink salon cape.
Her tiny hands were clenched in her lap.
Vanessa leaned toward the camera.
“People always ask why Chloe feels insecure around her cousin.”
She smiled.
“So today, we’re fixing the problem.”
Lily whispered, “I want my mommy.”
Vanessa ignored her.
She grabbed Lily’s braid.
Then she held it toward the camera.
“Look at this.”
The comment section scrolled down the side of the screen.
I recognized some names.
Women from Vanessa’s parenting group.
People from our neighborhood.
A few strangers.
HEART EMOJIS.
LAUGHING FACES.
Someone wrote:
DO IT. CHLOE DESERVES HER MOMENT.
My skin went cold.
Vanessa opened the scissors.
Lily began crying.
“Please don’t.”
Snip.
The braid came off.
Lily screamed.
I nearly dropped the tablet.
Behind me, Vanessa shouted, “That’s edited!”
I spun toward her.
“Edited?”
“It was a joke!”
“You cut my child’s hair while people watched.”
“I was proving a point.”
“What point?”
“That your daughter gets treated better than mine!”
Lily clung to my leg.
I wrapped one arm around her.
Vanessa’s voice grew sharper.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“No, Vanessa. Explain it.”
“Everywhere we go, people say Lily is beautiful.”
Her eyes filled with something ugly.
Not guilt.
Resentment.
“They touch her hair. They compliment her dresses. They say she looks like a little princess.”
I stared at her.
“So you punished her?”
“I didn’t punish her.”
“You made her bleed.”
“It was an accident.”
The video continued.
Vanessa’s recorded voice came from the tablet.
“Your mommy thinks she’s better than us, doesn’t she?”
Lily shook her head.
“No.”
“She thinks because she married Daniel, she gets everything.”
My blood froze at my husband’s name.
Then Vanessa turned Lily’s chair toward the camera.
“Tell everyone what your mommy keeps in the blue drawer.”
I looked down at Lily.
She buried her face against me.
“What blue drawer?”
Vanessa moved toward the tablet again.
I backed away.
The recorded Lily whispered, “I don’t know.”
Vanessa squeezed her shoulder.
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t.”
“Tell them.”
“I want Daddy.”
Then came the sentence that changed the room.
Vanessa leaned close to Lily’s ear.
“Your daddy already knows what Mommy did.”
My head jerked up.
“What did you tell her?”
Vanessa said nothing.
Onscreen, Lily began sobbing.
“I don’t want Mommy to go to jail.”
My stomach dropped.
“Lily?”
She looked up at me.
“Why would Mommy go to jail?”
Her little face went pale.
“Aunt Vanessa said police were coming.”
I slowly looked at my sister-in-law.
Vanessa’s arrogance disappeared.
I turned back to the video.
Near the end, Vanessa reached toward the camera.
But before the stream cut off, another voice came from somewhere behind her.
A man’s voice.
Low.
Familiar.
“Make sure she says it exactly the way we practiced.”
My entire body went still.
May you like
Because I knew that voice.
It belonged to my husband.
