Chapter 4 - The Counter-Attack
Marlo was not the kind of person who retreated when exposed; she was the kind of person who burned down the neighborhood to hide the match in her hand.
By seven o’clock the following morning, my phone began buzzing relentlessly on the nightstand.
It wasn't a call. It was a barrage of notifications from our extended family’s group thread, followed by alerts from social media.
Marlo had been awake all night.
*“Some people will do anything to cover up their own infidelity,”* read a public post on her Facebook page, shared to hundreds of friends, former schoolmates, and local community members. *“When someone gets caught living a lie, they’ll invent wild, slanderous stories about their late father’s estate just to distract everyone from the truth. It breaks my heart to see elder abuse allegations thrown around carelessly by someone who couldn't even stay faithful to her husband. Ren deserves the truth. Elias deserves the truth.”*
Attached to the post was a cropped photo of the "RESULTS STILL PENDING" onesie she had brought to the party, styled ironically against a backdrop of flowers, framed as a "lighthearted family joke that turned into an unhinged attack."
Beneath it were comments from her friends, people who didn't know Elias, me, or the situation:
*“Toxic sisters are the worst!”*
*“Why is she so defensive if she has nothing to hide?”*
*“Guilty conscience, clearly.”*
Then came the private messages.
My aunt Clara forwarded a screenshot of a mass text Marlo had sent to our entire family lineage at two in the morning. In it, Marlo claimed that Dad had explicitly given her the $52,000 as a "private gift" because she had sacrificed her career to be his hospice nurse, whereas I had supposedly "neglected him." She accused me of forging the bank statements myself to blackmail her.
*“Rachel has always been jealous of Dad’s love for me,”* Marlo wrote. *“She’s spiraling because Elias is finally realizing the truth about that baby’s red hair. Watch out for her—she’s dangerous and unstable.”*
I sat at the breakfast table, reading the venomous words on my screen while the morning sun crept over the kitchen tiles. My hands, surprisingly, were steady. The paralysis that had gripped me for the past year was gone. When someone shows you the absolute depth of their depravity, the fear vanishes, replaced by a crystalline, uncompromising resolve.
Elias walked into the kitchen carrying Ren. He set her in the high chair, kissed the crown of her copper curls, and then looked at my face.
“She’s posting,” he guessed calmly.
“She’s declaring war,” I replied, turning the screen toward him.
He skimmed the text, his expression darkening, but instead of the crushed, anxious look he had worn at Thanksgiving, his jaw tightened with cold fury.
“Good,” he said.
“Good?”
“Let her put it in writing,” Elias said, reaching for his coffee mug. “Every lie she writes on a public forum, every text she sends to thirty people, is another exhibit for a defamation suit. She thinks she’s playing a game of family gossip. She doesn’t realize she’s committing civil torts before breakfast.”
My phone rang. The screen displayed a contact name that made Elias’s posture stiffen immediately:
*LORETTA (MOM)*
Elias took the phone from my hand. He tapped the green icon and immediately put it on speaker, setting the device firmly in the middle of the table.
“Loretta,” Elias said, his voice flat.
“Elias!” his mother’s voice trilled, high-pitched with dramatic urgency. “Oh, thank heavens you answered! Have you seen what your sister-in-law is posting? Beckett just showed me. People are talking all over town. Is it true? Did Rachel attack her sister over a baby shirt? Elias, you need to bring Ren over here right now. If there are legal battles and police involved, you cannot have that child in an unstable home!”
Elias closed his eyes for a three-count, breathing through his nose. When he opened them, the tone of his voice was sharper than I had ever heard him use with his mother.
“Listen to me very carefully, Mother,” he said. “You are going to get in your car, you are going to pick up Beckett, and you are going to be at our front door at noon. Not one minute later.”
“Elias, I was only—”
“Noon,” he repeated, cutting her off. “If you aren’t here, you will not see Ren for her second birthday, or her third, or any birthday after that. Do you understand me?”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.
“...We’ll be there,” Loretta said weakly.
Elias ended the call, set the phone down, and turned to me.
May you like
“Call the laboratory,” he said. “We do the buccal swab today.”
***
