“You’re done giving orders in this house,” I said.
The word house came out like something bitter.
Vanessa looked at Mara then, and I saw the shape of the whole thing. The lies about missing jewelry. The whispers at dinner. The careful way she’d tried to turn the only reliable witness into the obvious suspect.
“You set me up,” I said.
Vanessa laughed again, but there was panic under it now. “Please. She did that herself. Look at them. They’re obsessed with her. She wanted you to see me as the villain.”
Mara met my eyes for the first time since I’d entered.
“I wanted you to see what they were living with,” she said.
There was a difference, and I heard it.
I asked Mara where the phone came from.
“Your old backup,” she said. “It was in the study drawer after the software upgrade last month. Lily found it when she was looking for construction paper.”
Lily wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Mara showed me how to hit record without unlocking it.”
Vanessa made a disgusted sound. “So the help and your daughter were building a case against me.”
“No,” Mara said. “I was trying to keep them safe until he looked.”
That line sat in the room.
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