Grandma Faked Dementia So My Sister Could Steal My Fiancé. Chapter 02

Grandma Faked Dementia So My Sister Could Steal My Fiancé. Chapter 02

She froze, then recovered. “My advisor and I got caught up talking about my project. It’s pretty urgent.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

She visibly relaxed and headed toward her room.

Halfway there, she turned back. “Claire, don’t read too much into today. Ethan won’t hold it against you for canceling.”

“I’m not overthinking anything.”

She gave me her sweetest smile. “Good.”

Then she went into her room.

After the door closed, I took out my phone and opened my photos.

One by one, all the little things I’d brushed aside came back to me.

On my birthday, Grandma insisted she’d seen someone writing on the walls. I panicked and rushed home from dinner.

Ethan said a client issue had come up and promised he’d make it up to me another day.

But that same night, Lily posted a photo from the lakefront to her Instagram Story.

Only half of a man’s hand showed in the frame.

On his wrist was the silver watch Ethan wore all the time.

On our fifth anniversary, Grandma woke up screaming in the middle of the night that someone had stolen her medication.

I stayed with her until three in the morning.

Lily said she was on campus working on her thesis.

The next day, she posted a photo of a movie ticket stub with the caption: Finally caught the midnight showing.

Two seat numbers were visible in the corner.

Side by side.

It had never crossed my mind.

Because she was my sister.

Because he was my boyfriend.

Once you trust someone, you start filling in the gaps in their story for them.

I scrolled back to last winter.

I’d made an appointment with a specialist to have Grandma reevaluated.

Mom said the clinic would be packed and she’d pick up the records for me.

Later, she handed me a printout and said the doctor wanted us to keep Grandma calm, avoid upsetting her, and make sure family stayed close.

I believed her.

After that, I started sending home an extra $800 a month for Grandma’s care.

They said it was for medication and a part-time home health aide.

Looking back, we’d never once had a regular aide.

I was always the one coming home after work to do laundry, cook, and clean up whatever mess had been left behind.

So where had the money gone?

I opened my banking app and went through the transfers one by one.

Every time I sent money to my mother, Diane, some of it ended up in Lily’s account a few days later.

The amounts changed. So did the memos.

Living expenses. School materials. Laptop.

My finger stopped on a $1,200 transfer.

It was from last month.

The memo said: Graduation photos and dress.

That same day, Lily had posted an Instagram Story and deleted it a few hours later.

She was in a long white dress, seated beside the floor-to-ceiling windows of a downtown hotel.

The Chicago River stretched below her.

A bouquet of roses sat in the corner of the photo.

Champagne roses. The kind Ethan always liked to send.

My stomach turned.

I bolted to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the sink.

The woman staring back at me was deathly pale, her eyes webbed with red.

I splashed cold water over my face.

When I looked up, I studied myself.

Twenty-nine.

A project manager at a global firm.

I could pull all-nighters, keep major projects on track, help pay off my family’s debts, help put my sister through grad school, and care for an elderly woman who supposedly had dementia.

Yet I had no idea how long everyone I trusted had been lying to me.

At dawn, Diane knocked on my bedroom door.

“Claire, why don’t you stay home from work today? Your grandma was up half the night. I’m worried she’ll wake up asking for you again.”

I opened the door.

Diane stood there with a bowl of oatmeal, looking exhausted.

She looked like a mother worn down by life.

I used to feel sorry for her.

Now she just looked like a stranger.

“I have a meeting at work.”

She frowned. “With this family in the state it’s in, work is still all you care about?”

I looked at her. “What exactly is wrong with this family?”

She went still.

I gave her a faint smile. “I’ll take the morning off. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

She didn’t say anything else.

I left the house.

I didn’t go to the office.

I went to the hospital.