Chapter 2Rigging My Father's Deadly Game

He asked me that with the righteous indignation of a saint.

Sacrificing yourself just this once.

He tossed the phrase around like he was asking me to pick up the dry cleaning.

I looked at him clutching his sacred box. I looked at Betty cowering behind him, trembling like a fragile leaf. And then I looked at my mother on the bed, her breath shallow and reedy, slipping further away with every tick of the wall clock.

In that moment, whatever warmth was left in my heart crystallized into solid ice.

From the day I formally refused to donate my bone marrow, our house turned into an arctic wasteland. My father stopped speaking to me altogether. Whenever he had to look at me, his eyes slid over me like I was a tumor he was waiting to have excised.

Betty, however, made a habit of visiting my bedroom to perform her daily theatrical sighs.

"Heather, Mom's getting worse. The doctors say she doesn't have much time," she’d whimper from my doorway. "Just take pity on me, please? I'm so terrified of surgeries..."

She’d start weeping again, her shoulders shaking.

I sat by the window, staring at the suburban street below, offering her nothing but silence.

When she realized the guilt trip wasn't working, the mask slipped.

"You know, Heather, don't think I don't know what this is really about. You're just jealous of me," Betty spat, her voice suddenly sharp and venomous. "You're jealous that Dad loves me more. You're jealous that my luck is better than yours."

"But what is there to be jealous of? It's just destiny! Dad said it himself—my destiny is simply better than yours!"

I finally turned my head to look at her.

"Are you done? Get the hell out of my room."

She choked on her next insult, stamped her foot in frustration, and ran out, sobbing loudly for my father's benefit.

Seconds later, his muffled roar vibrated through the floorboards. "Look what you've done to your sister! You cold-blooded sociopath!"

Later that night, my mother called me into her room.

She was fading fast, her body reduced to sharp angles and translucent skin under the duvet. She gripped my hand, her chest heaving as she struggled for air.

"Heather... please..." she rasped.

"I know... it's been so unfair to you..."

"But... but she's your father's lifeline... his most precious secret..."

I froze.

"Mom, what are you talking about?"

What did she mean... his precious secret?

My mother's eyes darted away. Her cracked lips moved, but no sound came out. Instead, a violent, rattling cough seized her chest, sounding as if she were coughing up shards of glass.

I panicked, gently rubbing her back to soothe her, but that phrase had already hooked itself deep into my brain, sharp and nagging.

The next morning, I pretended to leave for work but quietly slipped back through the kitchen door.

I crept up the stairs and hid in the cluttered alcove near the attic. From there, I watched my father unlock the door to his home office—a sanctuary neither Betty nor I were ever permitted to enter.

A few minutes later, Betty tiptoed down the hall and slipped inside after him.

I pressed myself against the wall, creeping toward the heavy oak door, and laid my ear against the sliver of space at the jamb.

I heard my father's voice. It was hushed, vibrating with a giddy excitement I hadn't heard in years.

"Betty, look. Look what Daddy got for you."

"An acceptance letter to the Parsons School of Design in Paris! I had to pull every string I had, but I got it."

"Once your mother... once the situation with the house is settled, I'm putting you on a plane. You're going to live the life you were always meant to live."

The blood in my veins turned to liquid nitrogen.

My mother was suffocating to death in the bedroom downstairs, and he was already paving a golden road for Betty's Parisian fantasy.

"Dad... isn't that going to cost a fortune?" Betty's voice asked, feigning hesitation.

"Don't you worry about the money, sweetheart," my father cooed, his tone dripping with an indulgence he had never once directed at me. "I've had it safely tucked away for a long time. Nobody can touch it. It's the money your grandparents left. It belongs to you."

Grandparents?

My mother's parents died when I was a toddler, and they died penniless. What money?

A deafening ringing started in my ears. An absurd, terrifying realization began to form in the back of my mind.

I bolted downstairs, throwing open the door to my mother's bedroom. She was heavily sedated, deep in an anesthetic sleep.

I dropped to my knees and began tearing through her bedside table, her closet, sliding my hands under the heavy mattress. Finally, tucked deep inside a concealed slit in the box spring, my fingers brushed against cold metal.

I pulled out a small, rusted tin box wrapped in a faded handkerchief.

My hands shook violently as I pried the lid open. Inside was a stack of yellowing letters and a single, sharply folded piece of official stationery.

I unfolded it.

Certificate of Paternity & Confidential Custody Agreement.

Child: Betty.