Chapter 2: The Arsenal of Truth

The house felt different when they returned from the market—smaller somehow, as if the walls had contracted under the weight of what had just happened. Elara sent the girls upstairs with gentle words and forced smiles, promising they'd figure everything out, that everything would be okay. But as soon as their footsteps faded down the hallway, she allowed her mask to slip.

Her hands were shaking as she poured herself a glass of wine—a good Cabernet she'd been saving for Lily's actual birthday celebration tomorrow. The irony wasn't lost on her. Instead of planning a party, she was planning a war.

The laptop sat closed on her kitchen island, innocent and unassuming. Inside its memory banks lay two years' worth of evidence she'd never had the chance to use—a digital graveyard of her marriage that she'd compiled with methodical precision during those final, hellish months before David's death.

She'd been preparing for a custody battle that never came, building a case for a divorce that death had rendered moot. Her attorney—a shark named Patricia Chen who specialized in high-asset divorces—had been impressed by Elara's thoroughness. "You'd make a hell of a paralegal," she'd said with dark humor. "Most clients bring me feelings. You brought me a federal case."

Now, three months later, Elara wondered if that evidence might serve a different purpose entirely.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Maya: Lily's crying again. Says she doesn't want to go to school Monday if everyone believes those lies.

The wine turned to ash in her mouth. Her fifteen-year-old daughter—who'd finally started drawing again, who'd laughed at a stupid TikTok video just yesterday—was back to hiding in her room, afraid to face the world.

Elara opened the laptop.

The folder was labeled "DV—Personal Files," buried three directories deep in her work computer's filing system. Even the name was a small act of rebellion—David's initials, but also the legal abbreviation for "domestic violence." Patricia had found that darkly amusing too.

The first subfolder contained financial records: bank statements showing mysterious cash withdrawals, credit card bills with charges David couldn't explain, evidence of the separate checking account he'd opened without telling her. Standard cheating husband behavior, nothing particularly shocking.

The second folder was more damning: screenshots of dating app profiles he'd maintained throughout their marriage, using photos that carefully cropped out his wedding ring. Messages with multiple women, some dating back years. Evidence that his affair with Rebecca Martinez—his twenty-four-year-old dental hygienist—was just the latest in a long pattern of infidelity.

But it was the third folder that had made Patricia whistle low under her breath: "DV—Family Communications."

Elara hesitated before opening it. These weren't just David's sins—these were the words his parents had used about their own granddaughters, preserved in digital amber for posterity.

The first screenshot was from a group text between David, Agnes, and Harold from eighteen months ago, just after Maya had discovered the affair:

Agnes Vance: That girl needs to learn some respect. Going through her father's phone like some kind of spy.

David Vance: She's seventeen, Mom. Teenagers are nosy.

Harold Vance: In my day, children minded their own business. This is what happens when you let women run the household.

Agnes Vance: I told you that woman would poison those girls against you. Look how Maya acts now, so hostile and disrespectful. Just like her mother.

Elara remembered that night clearly. Maya had come to her sobbing, phone in hand, having discovered text messages between David and Rebecca that were explicit enough to make a porn star blush. Instead of comforting his daughter, David had spent the evening on the phone with his parents, strategizing about "damage control."

She scrolled down to more recent messages, from the weeks following David's death:

Agnes Vance: I still say those girls are too much like her. All that drama and crying at the funeral. Acting like they're the only ones who lost someone.

Harold Vance: David always said Lily was too sensitive. Gets it from Elara's side.

Agnes Vance: Well, they're half ours now. We need to think about their spiritual welfare. Growing up in that house with that woman's influence...

Harold Vance: Maybe it's better David's not here to see what she's turning them into.

Elara's wine glass hit the counter harder than she'd intended. Even after their son's death, Agnes and Harold couldn't manage basic compassion for their grieving granddaughters. Instead, they'd used his funeral as an opportunity to catalog the girls' emotional responses and find them wanting.

But it was the final series of messages that made Elara's blood run cold. These were from just two weeks ago, around the time Agnes had started her social media campaign:

Agnes Vance: Talked to Pastor Mitchell today. He agrees the girls need Christian guidance. Says there are legal options if the mother is deemed unfit.

Harold Vance: You think it would come to that?

Agnes Vance: If we can show she's alienating them from family, turning them against their father's memory... well, there are precedents. Especially with all the therapy bills and antidepressants. Looks unstable.

Harold Vance: What about the insurance money?

Agnes Vance: If we get custody, we'd be their legal guardians. We'd control the life insurance funds until they're adults. Could pay for their proper upbringing, private Christian school...

Harold Vance: And the house?

Agnes Vance: One thing at a time, Harold. First we establish that she's an unfit mother. Then we can discuss the girls' other needs.

Elara stared at the screen, her hands trembling with rage. This wasn't about love or concern for their granddaughters. This was about money—David's life insurance payout, the house that was now fully in Elara's name, the comfortable lifestyle they could maintain as the girls' legal guardians.

They were planning to take her children. And they were using her efforts to get them therapy, to heal from their father's betrayal, as evidence of her unfitness as a mother.

"Mom?" Maya's voice came from the kitchen doorway. "Are you okay? You look like you're about to throw something."

Elara quickly minimized the window, but not before Maya caught a glimpse of the messages. Her daughter's face went pale, then flushed with anger.

"Are those from—?"

"Your grandparents," Elara finished grimly. "Among others."

Maya crossed the kitchen in three quick strides, reading over Elara's shoulder. "They want to take us away from you?"

"They want to try." Elara's voice was steady, but inside she felt like a wolf backed into a corner. "This explains the posts, the confrontation today. They're building a case."

"But that's insane. We don't want to live with them. We barely want to see them."

"In family court, what children want doesn't always matter. Especially when one side has money for good lawyers and character witnesses." Elara pulled up another folder. "But they made one crucial mistake."

"What's that?"

"They forgot that I was married to their son for nineteen years. I know exactly who they really are."

The next folder contained audio recordings—phone calls between David and his parents that she'd saved during the divorce proceedings. Patricia had advised her to record everything, a precaution that felt paranoid at the time but prescient now.

She clicked on a file dated three months before David's death:

Agnes's voice filled the kitchen, tinny through the laptop speakers but unmistakably venomous: "Those girls are going to grow up thinking their father was some kind of monster, all because their mother can't forgive a simple mistake."

David's voice, weary: "Mom, it wasn't exactly simple—"

"Oh, please. Men have needs, David. Your father stepped out once or twice when you were young, and I handled it like a proper wife should. But this generation of women, they think they deserve perfection."

"Maya won't even talk to me anymore. And Lily keeps asking why I hurt Mommy."

"Well, maybe if their mother wasn't filling their heads with victim nonsense... Those girls need to learn that families stay together through good times and bad. That's what marriage means."

Harold's voice, weaker but equally callous: "Your mother's right, son. Women today don't understand sacrifice. In our day, wives knew their place."

Maya's face was a mask of disgust. "They actually think Dad was the victim in all this."

"Oh, it gets worse." Elara clicked on another file, this one from just days before David's fatal heart attack:

Agnes again: "I don't care what that therapist says. Those girls don't need counseling, they need discipline. All this talk about 'processing trauma' and 'healing'—in my day, children dealt with family problems privately."

"The counselor says Lily's having nightmares about the divorce—"

"Of course she is! Her mother's probably coaching her, making her think her father's some kind of predator. Mark my words, David, that woman is going to turn your daughters against you completely if you don't put your foot down."

"I don't know how to fix this, Mom. Every time I try to talk to them, they just... they look at me like I'm a stranger."

"Well, maybe if you'd been a stronger father from the beginning... But it's not too late. You're still their parent. You have rights."

The recording ended, leaving the kitchen in silence. Maya was crying now, angry tears that she wiped away with sharp, violent gestures.

"They called us bastards," she whispered. "In one of those texts. I saw it before you closed the window. They called their own granddaughters bastards."

Elara pulled up the message thread, her heart breaking as she read Agnes's words: "I suppose it doesn't matter now that they're technically bastards—David never did make an honest woman of her. At least they have some of our blood in them."

"I'm sorry, baby," Elara said softly. "You shouldn't have had to see that."

"No, I'm glad I did." Maya's voice was hard now, harder than any seventeen-year-old's should be. "Because now I know exactly what we're fighting."

Elara opened the final folder, the one that made her stomach turn every time she accessed it. Screenshots of text messages between David and Rebecca, explicitly sexual in nature and cruel in their dismissal of his family. Messages where they laughed about Elara's "desperate" attempts to save their marriage, where they planned rendezvous in the family home while his daughters were at school.

But the worst ones were about the girls themselves—David complaining to his mistress about Maya's "attitude problem" and Lily's "dramatics," describing his own children as obstacles to his happiness.

"Jesus Christ," Maya breathed, reading over her shoulder. "He really hated us, didn't he?"

"He hated himself," Elara said quietly. "And people who hate themselves always need someone else to blame."

Maya was quiet for a long moment, scrolling through the evidence with the clinical detachment of someone cataloging weapons for war. Finally, she looked up at her mother with eyes that were far too old for her face.

"So what are we going to do with all this?"

Elara closed the laptop, her decision crystallizing with perfect clarity. Agnes and Harold Vance had spent months building a narrative about her fitness as a mother, her character, her worth. They'd painted her as vindictive, unstable, unfit.

They'd made one fatal error: they'd underestimated exactly how vindictive she could be when her children were threatened.

"We're going to tell the truth," she said, echoing her words from the car. "All of it. Every ugly, hypocritical, greedy detail."

"How?"

Elara smiled, and for the first time in months, it felt genuine. Sharp and dangerous, but genuine.

"Leave that to me, sweetheart. Your grandmother wants to play games with reputation and public opinion?" She reopened the laptop, her fingers already moving toward a new folder. "Let's see how she likes it when the playing field is level."