Chapter 10 - THE SISTER WHO WALKED AWAY
Leah Mercer waited in a church meeting room, twisting a tissue until it split. She and Amanda shared the same eyes, but Leah's face showed every year she'd spent avoiding her sister.
“After our father died, Amanda started keeping lists,” Leah said. “Who had money. Who needed help. Who wanted a family badly enough to believe her.”
Daniel bristled. “I didn't buy a wife.”
“No. You loved one.” Leah looked at him steadily. “That was how she got close.”
Leah had seen Cody before, back when Amanda called him her boyfriend. When their relationship turned volatile, Leah tried to intervene. Amanda accused her of jealousy and cut her off.
“Do you have proof?” Chen asked.
Leah took out an old phone. “Messages. I saved them because she threatened me too.”
One exchange, dated months before Daniel met Amanda, discussed “the Texas supplier with no family nearby.” Another described him as trusting and “easy to isolate.”
Daniel felt the words settle into him. At the time he'd been mourning his mother, working late, eating dinners alone in a house too large for one person. Amanda had brought him soup and said she'd never let him feel lonely again.
“Was any of it real?” he asked.
Leah's expression softened. “I can't answer that. I know she can care about someone and still choose to hurt them.”
Before they left, Leah opened the phone's photo folder. “She also sent me this when Emma turned thirteen. I thought it was a joke.”
It was a picture of Daniel's front gate with a small red X drawn over the camera. Beneath it Amanda had written:
FIRST DISABLE THE WITNESS. THEN CHANGE THE STORY.
But the next message was worse. It said:
May you like
EMMA ISN'T AS BLIND AS HE IS.
