But looking at the sheer, unadulterated hatred in her beautiful eyes, a chilling, heartbreaking realization washed over me.
The silence wasn’t protecting Chloe anymore. It was festering. The lie was mutating into a poison that was actively destroying her soul, turning her into a cruel, narcissistic monster. If I continued to hide, she would spend the rest of her life hating me, and hating our parents.
The protective instinct that had defined my entire existence warped into a cold, terrifying resolve.
I slowly stood up. The scraping of my chair cut through the sound of my father’s weeping.
“Stop crying, Mom,” I said. My voice was eerily flat, devoid of any emotion. It was the clinical tone of a surgeon preparing to amputate a limb to save a patient.
I looked directly into Chloe’s triumphant, furious eyes. She thought she had finally broken me. She thought I was going to run to my room in tears.
“A pool party is fine, Chloe,” I said, my voice echoing in the dead silence of the room. “You want me to be normal? You want me to stop hiding?”
