My Mother Cut Me Apart For My Sister Chapter 03

My Mother Cut Me Apart For My Sister Chapter 03

After Chloe’s lies chased me across every platform, I had nowhere left to go. I collapsed on the outskirts of Pine Ridge. The kids there took me in — fed me, gave me a room.

I stayed as a volunteer teacher. The days were hard, but they were honest. No one was framing me. No one was waiting for me to make my next mistake. Spring bled into summer, and slowly, I started coming back to life.

I never made it to autumn.

Victor spoke with the certainty of a man who had nothing left to lose. The police mobilized and set out for Pine Ridge.

The moment they reached the village, Mom marched up to a boy. “Do you know Stella?”

She didn’t believe it — not for a second. A girl like me, the one who’d supposedly made Chloe’s life a living hell, volunteering out here? Impossible.

The boy’s lower lip trembled. Then he burst into tears.

“Miss Hayes… are you here because of Miss Hayes?”

“I miss her so much. She was the best teacher we ever had. Please — please catch whoever hurt her.”

My eyes stung. That was Toby Jenkins. My student.

The kids in Pine Ridge had been fending for themselves as long as they could remember—parents gone, lost to addiction, locked up, or simply never coming back. Nobody held them. Nobody told them they mattered.

Nobody loved them. And nobody loved me. So I did all of it — washed their clothes, cut their nails, scrubbed their hair clean.

I held them and told them I loved them, over and over, until they believed it. Two months in, the dead look in their eyes was gone. They looked at me like I’d put the stars in the sky.

I thought Mom would be proud. She just stared at Toby, her face unreadable. The chat blew up:

[Wait… Stella actually cared about kids??]

[I grew up without my parents too. That kid’s face is genuine — you can’t fake that kind of grief. Did we… get her wrong?]

[No way. After she left the industry she kept popping up to start drama and cash in on the hate. She’s a grifter. There’s no version of her that would do this.]

The group moved deeper into the village, and a crowd surged to meet them — men, women, children, older villagers — pressing forward, their voices breaking over one another.

“Officers, please — you have to get justice for Ms. Hayes!”

“We heard you came from the city to investigate what happened to her!”

“She was a good person. The school was falling apart, and she kept going back to the city to raise money. You know how she did it? She let the media rip her apart.”

“She took every headline, every comment section full of people calling her garbage—and she monetized the hate. She sold her own trashy stories to the tabloids, taking the payout while she smiled through it.”

“I’m a grown man, and I couldn’t stomach even half of what they said. She’d read the worst of it out loud to me, laughing, and say she was used to it. Six months of that, and she’d saved enough to keep the school running.”

“We told her to just tell the truth — tell the press she needed the money for the school. She wouldn’t do it. Said nobody would believe her anyway.” His voice broke. “She was a good person. She was really, really good.”

The chat went dead silent.

I smiled through my tears.

Mom, I wasn’t a disappointment. At home, I was invisible—the jealous troublemaker everyone blamed. In the industry, I was the scandal-soaked drama queen.

But here — I finally found out what I was worth.

You’re proud of me now, right, Mom?

She crossed her arms. The sneer returned.

“Nice performance.”

“Chloe told me she saw her catch an overnight bus to Pine Ridge just last night. How much did she pay all of you?”

“You’re all trying way too hard. Where’s this so-called grave? I want to dig it open myself and see whether she’s dead or hiding.”

The pain hit so hard I thought I would shatter. Why, Mom? Even now — even with all of this — you still don’t believe me?

How could any of this be an act? Under your bright, clinical lights, you’d already taken me apart with your own hands.

Mom marched toward the cemetery, the officers trailing behind. A thin, broken smile crossed my face.

Go ahead, Mom. That grave holds the last letter I ever wrote.