That message was sent four days before Lucy’s party.
Then I came home and wouldn’t stop asking questions.
Colin told Marsh the party was never supposed to put Lucy in a hospital bed. Vanessa wanted a distraction — something loud enough to keep me from walking into Monday’s meeting with the folder Priya had helped me build. Enough chaos to buy them time to finish scrubbing what was left before an outside audit could trace it.
She used an over-the-counter antihistamine parents give kids for allergies. Far more than a normal dose. Expecting drowsiness. An upset stomach. A canceled party.
Not a heart that stopped keeping its own rhythm.
She hadn’t known about Lucy’s heart.
Neither had any of us, until that night.
I sat with that longer than I sat with almost anything else in this — that my sister’s plan to protect a lie about money had become something that could have killed my daughter, and that in whatever calculation she’d run in her head, that had been the acceptable risk.
