Chapter 3 – [THE GHOST IN THE CANVAS]

I backed away from the canvas, my mind reeling.

Dated last year.

Sophie’s mother died when we were eight. How could a painting bear her signature and a date from just twelve months ago?

Footsteps pounded down the basement stairs.

I turned as Sophie burst into the room, her cheek still red from where Mom had struck her. She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes sweeping over the exposed canvases.

“My mom…” Sophie choked out. “These are my mom’s.”

“Sophie, look at the date,” I whispered, pointing to the bottom corner.

She walked closer, her breath hitching. She touched the dried oil paint. “Two thousand twenty-five. Emily… how?”

Before I could answer, Dad walked into the room, dragging Mom by the arm. She was still weeping, refusing to look at the paintings.

“Explain this, Helen,” Dad demanded. His voice was cold, completely devoid of the blind support he usually offered her.

Mom sank onto an old wooden crate, burying her face in her hands.

“She didn’t die,” Mom sobbed.

The basement went completely silent.

“What?” Sophie whispered.

“Your mother didn’t die of a brain aneurysm, Sophie,” Mom cried, looking up with mascara streaking her face. “She’s in a psychiatric facility in upstate New York. She has been for nine years.”

Sophie swayed on her feet. I reached out and grabbed her arm to keep her from falling.

“You told me she was dead,” Sophie breathed. “You made me stand at a gravestone.”

“It was an empty casket!” Mom yelled defensively. “She made me do it! Clara begged me to tell you she was dead so you wouldn’t have to grow up visiting her in a hospital!”

“That’s a lie,” a voice said from the doorway.

We all turned.

Aunt Margaret stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was wearing her usual trench coat, her expression carved from stone.

“Hello, Helen,” Margaret said quietly. “I see the girls finally found the key Ellen left them.”

“Get out of my house, Margaret,” Mom hissed.

“Not without my nieces,” Margaret replied. She stepped into the room and looked at Dad. “David, did you really not know?”

Dad looked completely lost. “Know what? Margaret, what is going on?”

Margaret sighed. She walked over to the painting of Sophie in the yellow dress.

“Clara Vance isn’t in a psychiatric facility because she’s crazy, David. She’s there because Helen had her committed.”

Mom lunged off the crate. “Shut up! You have no proof of that!”

“Ellen found the proof before she died,” Margaret said softly. “That’s why she left Emily the cottage and the trust fund. She knew Helen would eventually try to destroy Emily the way she destroyed Clara.”

I looked at my aunt. “Why? Why did Mom do this?”

Margaret turned to me. “Because twenty years ago, Helen and Clara were both trying to get into the Riverside Institute of Art. Clara got a full scholarship. Helen was rejected.”

Margaret pointed to the canvases.

“Helen couldn’t stand it. So she spent years undermining Clara’s mental health. When Clara had postpartum depression after Sophie was born, Helen manipulated Clara’s doctors, forged letters, and convinced a judge that Clara was a danger to her own child.”

Sophie let out a gut-wrenching sob. “She took me away from my mother?”

“She stole you,” Margaret corrected. “And she stole Clara’s portfolio. Helen has been secretly selling Clara’s paintings through a private broker in New York for nine years.”

Dad staggered backward, grabbing the doorframe for support. “The money… the money for the renovations. You said you inherited it.”

“She sold my mother’s life,” Sophie whispered.

Mom stood up, wiping her face, her expression suddenly hardening into something cold and unrecognizable.

“She was weak!” Mom spat. “Clara was brilliant, but she was a coward! She never would have made it in the industry! I gave her art an audience. I gave her daughter a home!”

“By making me feel like a burden every day of my life?” Sophie screamed.

Mom turned her cold eyes to me.

“And I gave you a career, Emily. Those five paintings that got accepted today? You painted them, yes. But the vision was Clara’s. You’re nothing but a copy machine.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

For a second, I believed her.

But then I remembered the long hours. The colors I chose. The way I altered the sketches because I felt something different.

“No,” I said quietly.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

“What are you doing?” Mom snapped.

“Calling the police,” I said. “You kidnapped a child and committed fraud.”

Before I could dial 911, Mom grabbed a heavy glass solvent jar from the table.

She didn’t throw it at me.

She threw it directly at the canvas of Sophie in the yellow dress.

The glass shattered. The harsh chemical splashed across the beautiful oil painting, instantly eating away the colors, melting the face of the little girl.

“If I go down,” Mom whispered, her eyes wild, “I’m burning Clara’s legacy to the ground.”

And she pulled a silver lighter from her pocket.

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