Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 07

Brother, This April Fools’ Day Is the Last One Chapter 07

“She’s actually having an art show? Do people actually buy her work?”

To Oliver’s credit, he told the truth. He said I was talented, that an art teacher he knew had called me a once-in-a-generation talent.

“Her teacher put the whole show together. Her work has already been selling.”

My dad scoffed. He said people were only buying because they respected the teacher, and Chloe was probably the only idiot naive enough to think they actually liked her art.

Mom held up one of the drawings I’d done as a kid. She said if that was what people called talent, she could do the same thing.

They stood over my body and tore me apart, piece by piece, and somehow seemed pleased with themselves.

Then Lily started crying. I had no idea what she had to cry over.

From the looks on their faces, nobody else got it either.

Oliver turned to Lily without thinking, his voice dropping soft and careful as he asked what was

wrong.

I’d never heard him talk to me like that. Everything Oliver ever gave me came wrapped in contempt.

My dad walked right through me on his way to Lily. He knelt beside her, soothing her, murmuring the kind of comforting words he’d never once offered me.

I’d spent years wondering, would they have believed her if it had been Lily instead of me?

There was no way of knowing. That pain had been mine for as long as I could remember, and even though I hated Lily, I never would’ve wished that on her.

While I was still trying to process that, Lily said something so outrageous I didn’t even know how to

react.

“Those paintings? They were all my ideas. Chloe stole them and passed them off as her own.”

“What?” Mom shot to her feet and grabbed Lily by the arm. “We’re going to that show.”

No one tried to stop her. I watched the whole thing and felt nothing but the pure absurdity of it all.

Go. Go see for yourselves.

The truth would be hanging on those walls the moment they walked in. On the drive over, Lily kept

spinning story after story about how I’d stolen from her.

Everyone in the car believed every word of it. Arthur even joined in.

“Honestly? Chloe’s had problems since she was young. If she was willing to fabricate those vicious

lies about me, then stealing someone else’s ideas would be nothing to her.”

My dad didn’t say a word the entire ride. Oliver turned to Lily and asked if she was sure about this.

“Oliver, I’m just trying to get the credit I deserve. Do you think I’m lying?”

Lily’s eyes were welling with tears. Oliver didn’t push it. If anything, he looked nervous for her.

The second they arrived, Mom was out of the car, dragging Lily behind her.

“I’m shutting this whole thing down, right in front of Chloe’s face.”

She shoved the gallery door open and screamed my name.

“Chloe! Get out here! You stole your sister’s ideas and had the nerve to put on a show?”

But the words died in her throat the second she looked at the walls. Every painting in the gallery was about me, my life, my memories, everything I’d lived through.

Arthur’s assault. Oliver and Lily’s cruelty. My parents abandoning me. It was all there.

Every canvas told a story, and every one of them was mine.

What part of any of this was Lily’s?

Was it the painting of a man telling a girl her parents would never believe her? Or the one where a girl was mocked by her siblings and punished for reacting?

Or maybe she was the daughter abandoned in Oakville for over a decade, left to rot by everyone

there. None of that was Lily’s life. None of it.