Chapter 2: The First Cut

Chapter 2: The First Cut

The front door clicked shut, severing us from the cold night and the weeping woman on our porch. The sound was unnaturally loud in the suffocating silence of the living room. Darla was gone, but her ghost remained, a specter of betrayal so profound it had hollowed out the very air we breathed.

My mother, Sarah, stood frozen in the middle of the room, her back to us. She looked small, her corrections officer’s posture collapsed inward as if under an immense, invisible weight. She didn’t speak. She didn’t cry. She just stared at the wall, at the framed photo of her and Chris on their wedding day, a smiling lie captured in silver.

“Mom?” Chloe’s voice, usually a blade, was now a fragile thread. She reached out, but hesitated, her hand hovering in the space between them.

Without a word, Mom walked to the wall, took down the photograph, and carried it into the kitchen. We followed, a silent, helpless procession. She opened the trash can, held the frame over the abyss of coffee grounds and vegetable peels for a long moment, and then simply let it go. It landed with a dull, muffled thud. No shattering glass, no dramatic crash. Just a quiet disposal, an unceremonious end.

Then she turned to us, a strange, terrifying calm on her face. “I’m going to bed,” she announced, her voice flat. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not now. Not ever. I just want it to be over.”

She walked past us, up the stairs, each footstep a leaden beat in the funereal rhythm of the house. We listened until her bedroom door closed, another click sealing a separate chamber of pain.

The three of us were left in the kitchen, standing around the trash can that now served as a tombstone for our mother’s marriage.

“Over?” Chloe hissed, her voice a whip-crack in the stillness. “She wants it to be over? That bastard doesn’t get to just walk away after this. He doesn’t get to blow up our mother’s life and start a new one like nothing happened.”

She began to pace, a caged tiger fueled by a righteous inferno. “I’ll kill him. I swear to god, Alex, I’ll go to his new girlfriend’s house and I will tear him apart.”

Ben, who had been leaning against the counter like a stone gargoyle, pushed himself upright. “I’ll drive,” he said, his voice a low rumble. It wasn’t a joke.

I held up a hand. “No.”

“No?” Chloe rounded on me, her eyes blazing. “Did you not see Mom’s face? Did you not hear what that woman said? He’s having a baby with someone else! While living in our mother’s house, eating her food, sleeping in her bed!”

“I saw,” I said, my voice dangerously level. “And that’s exactly why we can’t do what you’re suggesting. Mom just said it herself. She wants it to be over. She can’t handle more drama, more fighting. If you go over there and start swinging, what happens? The police get called. It becomes a public spectacle. It gets back to her. You’d be causing her more pain just to satisfy your own anger.”

My words landed like a splash of cold water. Chloe’s righteous fury faltered, replaced by frustrated confusion. “So what? We do nothing? We just let him win?”

“He’s not going to win,” I said. The cold, calculating part of my brain, briefly stunned by the initial shock, was now firing on all cylinders. A plan was forming, a series of moves on a chessboard only I could see. “We’re not going to attack him. We’re going to dismantle him. Piece by piece. Quietly. So quietly that by the time he realizes what’s happening, he’ll be sitting in a pile of rubble with no idea who lit the match.”

Just then, the landline on the kitchen wall shrieked, making us all jump. We stared at it, knowing instinctively who it was. It rang once. Twice.

On the third ring, before I could stop her, Chloe snatched the receiver off the hook. “What do you want?” she snarled.

I could hear the tinny, indistinct sound of Chris’s voice on the other end, wheedling, slick with false contrition. Chloe listened, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the phone.

“Oh, you’re sorry?” she spat. “You’re sorry you got caught, you mean. She doesn’t want to talk to you. Ever again.”

More tinny pleading. Chloe’s face contorted into a mask of pure disgust.

“A mistake? You call building a secret family a mistake?” She paused, listening. Her next words were laced with ice. “What did you just say?”

She held the phone out so Ben and I could hear. Chris’s voice, smug and self-pitying, echoed from the small speaker.

“...look, Sarah couldn’t give me a kid. We talked about it. She was too old. A man wants a legacy. What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I stopped loving your mother…”

I saw red. A hot, blinding rage that momentarily eclipsed all my careful planning. He was blaming her. Blaming our mother for his own disgusting, deliberate betrayal. That single, self-serving statement was his confession and his death sentence all in one.

Chloe snapped the phone back to her ear. “You are a pathetic, worthless piece of trash. I hope you rot.” She slammed the receiver down with such force that the plastic cradle cracked.

The silence that followed was different. It was no longer sorrowful. It was charged. It was the calm before a storm of our own making. Any shred of mercy, any thought of letting things lie, had just been incinerated by Chris’s own arrogance.

“Okay,” Chloe said, her voice trembling with rage. “What’s the plan, Alex?”

I walked over to the kitchen counter and picked up a notepad. Chris’s power came from two things: the illusion of charm, which was now shattered, and his job. His mediocre, middle-management job at the ‘ValueMart’ retail chain was his entire source of income, his foothold in the world. It was the foundation of the new life he was building with Darla.

It was the first piece we would take.

“Do you remember Betty?” I asked, looking at Chloe. “Betty Miller? Her husband used to work with Dad at the plant.”

Chloe frowned. “Vaguely. Short lady, permed hair? Why?”

“She’s a regional HR manager for ValueMart now,” I said. “I saw her name on a company award plaque when I went to pick Mom up from work once. She owes our family. Dad helped her husband get his pension sorted out when the plant laid him off.”

A slow, predatory grin spread across Chloe’s face. “Oh.”

I picked up my cell phone. Ben moved to stand behind me, a silent, imposing shadow of approval. I found Betty’s number in Mom’s old address book. It was a long shot, but loyalty ran deep in our town.

I took a breath and dialed.

“Betty? Hi, it’s Alex Taylor. Sarah’s son.” My voice was pitched perfectly—calm, concerned, respectful. “I am so sorry to call you at home, but something’s happened and we’re worried it might affect your company.”

I laid it out, not with rage, but with carefully curated concern. I told her about Chris’s drinking, his erratic behavior. I mentioned the sudden breakup. Then I delivered the masterstroke, a lie wrapped in a believable truth.

“The woman he was seeing,” I said, lowering my voice conspiratorially, “she let it slip that Chris has been taking things from the store. Stock, supplies. To set up their new apartment. We’re terrified he’s stealing from the company, Betty. And with his… history… we’re scared it’s going to get very ugly and drag my mother’s name through the mud.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. For a corporate manager, theft and liability were blood in the water. Chris, the ex-con, was a risk she never should have approved.

“Thank you for telling me this, Alex,” Betty said, her tone all business. “You were right to call. I will handle this. Discreetly.”

“Thank you, Betty. We just… we want this to be over.” I used my mother’s words, twisting them into a weapon.

We hung up. The three of us stood in the kitchen, the air thick with anticipation. We didn’t have to wait long.

The next afternoon, my phone buzzed. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize, but I knew who it was from. The message was two words.

It’s done.

I showed the screen to Chloe. Her vicious, triumphant smile was the first real ray of light in the house since sundown.

The first cut had been made. Clean. Silent. Devastating. Chris didn’t know it yet, but he was already bleeding out. And we were just getting started.