My Pregnancy Record Proved I Cheated? Then Why Did My Sister Panic? Chapter 06

My Pregnancy Record Proved I Cheated? Then Why Did My Sister Panic? Chapter 06

Two days later, the police had their preliminary findings. 

Dana sent me the investigative summary while I was organizing the transcripts of the recordings from the wedding. 

The summary was short, but every line made me want to fling my cold coffee at the screen. 

Chloe really had been pregnant. Nathan was the 

father. 

Three months earlier, Chloe had gotten drunk and called Nathan in the middle of the night, asking him to come pick her up. 

After that night, they kept seeing each other for 

almost two months, until Chloe found out she was 

pregnant. 

Nathan panicked. He took her to the local 

women’s hospital for an abortion and signed the 

paperwork. 

He thought that was the end of it. 

Chloe had other plans. She believed that if she destroyed my reputation, Nathan would be hers. 

She kept the pregnancy record, got someone to take the photo she needed, and built an entire 

story around it before setting the whole thing on fire at my wedding. 

Only the fire never reached me. It burned her 

instead. 

I read the summary several times before 

forwarding it to the family group chat. 

The chat stayed completely silent for about three 

minutes. 

Then one of my aunts started unsending 

messages. 

She removed them one after another. 

The tearful voice notes and text messages 

disappeared, replaced by gray notices that read 

[Message unsent]. 

Another aunt unsent all three of her one–minute 

voice messages too. 

I watched the gray notices climb up the screen 

one after another, like foam breaking apart on the 

beach as the tide pulled away. 

Then one of my aunts sent a new message. 

Aunt: [I always said Chloe couldn’t be trusted.] 

[I looked into that stolen–money incident later. Chloe was the one who took it and blamed Vivian.] 

[That girl has been lying since she was little.] 

Another aunt quickly jumped in. 

Another aunt: [Exactly. Chloe used to talk trash 

about Vivian back home. I knew something was 

off about her even then.] 

[Poor Vivian has put up with so much all these years. We saw it, and it broke our hearts.] 

Then two more aunts and one of my cousins‘ wives piled on, dragging up every ugly story they could remember about Chloe. 

Cheating on the SAT. Borrowing money in college and never paying it back. Getting detained after sneaking off to a bar. 

Things none of them had ever mentioned in the 

group before had suddenly become things they 

had “known all along.” 

I muted the chat and stopped reading. 

Dad unsent his voice message too. 

He called once. I didn’t answer. 

He called again. I still didn’t answer. 

Then he sent me a text. 

Dad: [Vivian, I was wrong.] 

I stared at those words. 

For a moment, I was back in that private room, 

watching him rise from his chair. 

The sound of that slap still rang in my left ear. 

I deleted the message without replying. 

Mom came by that evening. 

She stood outside my door with her eyes swollen 

nearly shut and the whites streaked red. 

She told me that when the police took Chloe into 

custody, Chloe kept looking back and calling for 

Mom until her voice went hoarse. 

She told me Dad had ended up in the hospital 

after his blood pressure spiked. The doctor said if 

they had gotten him there any later, he could have 

suffered a brain hemorrhage. 

She told me everything at home was a complete 

mess. Relatives kept calling with questions, and 

she had no idea what to tell them. 

When she finished, she tried to step inside. 

I blocked the doorway. 

“Anything else?” 

“Chloe knows she was wrong.” 

“She cried the whole time at the station. She kept 

calling your name.” 

“She wants to see you. She wants to apologize to 

you in person.” 

I gave a short laugh. 

“She was saying my name at the wedding too, 

while she slammed that pregnancy record down 

beside the champagne tower.” 

Tears spilled from Mom’s eyes. 

“But you’re sisters.” 

“When Dad hit me in that room, you didn’t stop him.” 

“When the family was tearing me apart in the 

group chat, you didn’t say one word for me.” 

“When Mrs. Holloway insulted me for coming from a family like ours, you stayed silent.” 

“And now you want to talk to me about being sisters?” 

Her lips parted. 

They trembled as a sound caught in her throat, but whatever she meant to say dissolved into tears. 

In the end, nothing came out. 

I closed the door. 

I didn’t slam it. I only eased it shut. 

The click of the lock sounded louder than anything else. 

I leaned against the wall by the entryway, aware that she was still standing outside. 

She stayed there so long that I thought she had left. 

Then I heard her footsteps, slow and heavy, 

moving toward the elevator one at a time. 

The elevator chimed. 

The doors opened, then closed again. 

I went back into the living room. 

My phone lit up. 

One of my aunts had sent me a long private message claiming she had always cared about me and that she had no idea what had come over her when she said those things in the group. 

She begged me not to take any of it to heart. 

Another aunt sent something similar, asking me to forgive her for the sake of family. 

I took screenshots of everything and replied to 

none of them. 

Outside, the sky was already growing dark. 

I sat on the couch and opened the notice Dana had sent me that afternoon confirming the case was formally moving forward. I read it from beginning to end again. 

Then I picked up my phone and added one thing to tomorrow’s calendar: go to the police station and give a supplemental statement. 

This time, no amount of pleading would change. my mind.