Chapter 6 - The Wisdom of a Child
Victoria sneeded, trying to regain a shred of dignity as she straightened her ruined bodice. "That brat? She's just a kid with a big mouth."
"She's smarter than you'll ever be," I said coldly.
I turned around and looked down into the front pews. Lily was standing beside Aunt Beatrice, clutching Chloe's hand tightly. Her little face was still tense with residual fear, but her chin was held high.
"Lily, honey, come here," I called out softly.
Lily hesitated for a second, then walked slowly up the carpeted steps, her small white flower girl shoes clicking against the marble. She stopped a few feet away from Victoria, eyeing the woman with deep, instinctive distrust.
"Daddy," Lily whispered, her fingers curling into my pants legs. "Is she going to jail?"
"Yes, baby, she is," I said, kneeling down to look at my daughter in the eyes. "I want to know something. How did you know? Out of all the adults in this church—out of your aunts, your uncles, your grandparents—how did you figure out she wasn't Chloe?"
Lily blinked, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Because Aunt Chloe has a soft spot right here," Lily said, reaching out and gently touching the lower part of my ear, where Chloe's scar sat. "When we went dress shopping yesterday at the bridal boutique, the lady helping us tried to put clip-on earrings on Aunt Chloe. Aunt Chloe laughed and told me the story about the bad car crash, and how she couldn't wear heavy earrings on that side because the skin is tender."
Lily turned her gaze toward Victoria, her expression hardening with surprising maturity.
"When this lady walked out of the dressing room yesterday to show us the veil, she touched her left ear twice and pinned a heavy diamond earring right through her earlobe," Lily continued, her voice clear and steady. "I asked her why her ear looked different. She told me she had plastic surgery to fix it. But adults lie when they think kids aren't listening. I knew grown-ups don't magically grow new earlobes overnight."
A collective murmur of awe swept through the congregations. Several women in the back openly wiped away tears.
Victoria stood frozen, her jaw slack. "You... you ruined everything over an earlobe ?"
"No," a cold, sharp voice interrupted from behind me.
Chloe stepped up onto the altar, wrapped in a warm blanket, her face pale but her eyes burning with fierceness, unyielding resolve. She looked directly at her twin sister with a mixture of profound grief and absolute disgust.
"She ruined your scheme because children notice love, Victoria," Chloe said, her voice trembling slightly. "You didn't know about my ear because you never cared enough to look at me, to talk to me, or to know anything about my life for the last five years. You only saw what I had, and you wanted to steal it."
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Victoria opened her mouth to snap back a retort, but the heavy oak doors at the back of the cathedral flew open with a resounding bang.
Two uniformed police officers, accompanied by a state trooper, rushed down the center aisle, their boots echoing across the marble floor.
