Chapter 6
Brielle watched her father study the floor while June repeated what she had found.
"I need to see everything you signed," June told him. "Copies are fine for now."
Marcus rubbed his temples. "Celeste handles the studio paperwork."
"The studio wasn't hers to handle," June replied.
Celeste's voice sharpened. "Someone had to keep it from bleeding money. Lillian's little fantasy wasn't paying the mortgage."
"There is no mortgage," June said.
For the first time that morning, Celeste seemed uncertain. She glanced at Marcus, who avoided her eyes. June opened her folder and showed the older deed. Lillian had paid the property off two years before her death.
"Then there are operating debts," Celeste said. "You want to quibble over words while the girls lose their inheritance?"
Brielle had seen how a rumor at school could grow from one photograph. The video frightened her because it came from home, where she had always assumed she could put away her public face. The frame showed enough of her father's anger to make strangers feel they knew him. It showed Brielle kneeling beside the dress, but not her frantic effort to save it. She watched the little progress bar move across the screen and felt a kind of helplessness she couldn't explain in words. The facts she knew were still true. The footage simply had a louder voice.
At home, Brielle used to make a quick calculation before speaking: how many minutes of anger would follow, whether Naomi might hear, whether the next meal would become silent. She was learning that keeping peace by swallowing the truth never made the house peaceful. It merely moved the cost into her own body. That was why the note on her locker frightened her as much as the video. Someone had carried the rules of the house into a place where she was supposed to have a life beyond them.
The counselor's office was down the hall from the library, a place Brielle had avoided because she thought asking for help meant losing control. She thought of how Naomi had trusted her to hold the dress together and decided someone ought to hold the rest of this together with her. She left her phone in her pocket long enough to write down who had shown her the clip and what the student actually said. She didn't want to turn classmates into enemies just because they had repeated what they saw. She wanted a record. She also wanted to go home and sleep without waking to another accusation. For once she admitted those desires could exist together.
Brielle almost argued. Instead she asked which debts. Celeste said the information was confidential. Marcus said they should stop upsetting Naomi. Naomi, sitting at the end of the table, asked whether her dress had been an operating debt. No one answered.
June stood. "We'll speak through counsel from here on about the property. That doesn't stop anyone from treating these children decently."
After she left, Marcus called Brielle into the hallway. His voice was low and exhausted.
"Why couldn't you just let the adults sort it out?"
"Because you blamed me for something I didn't do."
He looked toward the kitchen. "I saw you with the scissors."
"You saw me trying to repair the dress. Did you ever ask who used them before me?"
Marcus opened his mouth, then closed it. Brielle recognized the expression: he wanted his daughter to give him a simple explanation he could accept without challenging his marriage.
"I won't apologize for telling the truth," she said.
That evening, Brielle searched the photographs she had taken while designing Naomi's gown. One image from Sunday showed the dress hanging intact in the studio, blue tulle spilling over Lillian's old cutting table. In the reflection of the dark window behind it, a pale handbag sat on a stool. The photo metadata showed 6:14 p.m.
Celeste had claimed she hadn't been near the studio that weekend.
Brielle nearly sent the photograph to Marcus. Then she remembered his face in the kitchen and sent it to June instead, along with an explanation of where and when she had taken it.
June replied with one sentence: Keep the original image, and don't edit it.
The next morning, Brielle found a handwritten note taped inside her locker: STOP STEALING YOUR MOTHER'S THINGS.
Her fingers went cold. Nobody at school should have known about the key or the cabinet. She photographed the note, left it intact, and went straight to the counselor's office.
As she waited, a student she barely knew passed the open doorway and whispered, "Everyone saw the video."
"What video?" Brielle asked.
May you like
The girl held out her phone. On-screen, Brielle was kneeling beside Naomi's shredded blue dress. Marcus's angry voice filled the tiny speaker, accusing her of destroying it. The clip ended just before Brielle said she hadn't done it.
Someone had taken the footage from the bedroom and posted it publicly.
