Clara didn’t move. She watched him with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a bug under a microscope.
“I didn’t know,” Marcus stammered, his hands shaking. “I swear to you, Clara. She told me it was an accident. I thought… I thought I was protecting the family.”
“You thought it was easier to love the daughter who wasn’t broken,” Clara said. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried. “You asked me why I’m still alive? I survived out of spite, Dad. For the first two years, purely out of spite. And then…” She looked at Liam. “Then I survived for justice.”
“I can make it up to you,” Marcus pleaded, desperation creeping into his tone. He looked around at the guests, realizing his reputation was disintegrating by the second. “Clara, please. We can start over. You’re my daughter. My only daughter.”
Clara laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
“You lost both daughters today, Dad. One to prison, and one to the truth.”
She turned her back on him. It was the hardest thing she had ever done, and the easiest. The bond was severed. The gaslighting—the years of being told she was crazy, clumsy, unlovable—evaporated in the light of the video evidence. She wasn’t the crazy one. She never had been.
