Chapter 5 - The Brick Was Waiting
Vanessa denied everything.
Of course she did.
She told police she barely knew Ryan.
She claimed she had only seen him once.
Then our doorbell camera proved she was lying.
The footage was from the morning before Lily was attacked.
Vanessa’s car stopped across from our house.
She got out carrying a large tote.
For six minutes, she disappeared beyond the edge of the porch camera.
When she returned, the tote looked flatter.
Detective Marquez paused the footage.
“What normally sits beside that planter?”
I stared at the screen.
“Nothing.”
The brick Ryan used had been found beside that exact planter.
Daniel whispered, “She planted it.”
“Maybe,” Marquez said. “We still need proof.”
Vanessa had been clever.
But not quite clever enough.
Her fingerprints weren’t usable.
The phone messages couldn’t yet be tied to her.
And she insisted she had stopped near our home because Daniel had asked her to drop off business papers.
Then she produced messages from Daniel that appeared to support her story.
Daniel exploded.
“I never sent those!”
Detective Marquez stared at him.
“Then someone has spent a lot of time making you look guilty.”
I wanted that to make me feel sorry for him.
It didn’t.
Because even if Daniel hadn’t ordered Lily’s attack, his lies had built the room in which it happened.
His secret child.
His burner phone.
His mistress.
Every locked door had given Vanessa somewhere to hide.
That afternoon, Jenna called me.
“I found something in Ryan’s backpack.”
It was a folded birthday card.
Inside, Daniel had written:
To Ryan—whatever happens, you are my son.
But underneath Daniel’s handwriting was another sentence written in blue ink.
Soon you won’t have to share him anymore.
Ryan said Vanessa had written it.
And suddenly the attack wasn’t looking like a child’s spontaneous jealousy.
May you like
It looked planned.
👉 Vanessa hadn’t merely encouraged Ryan’s anger—she had been teaching him to see Lily as the obstacle between him and his father.
