Chapter 40 - The Empty Apology
Evelyn began to weep, weak, pathetic tears rolling down her hollow cheeks. It was the same manipulative crying she used to deploy when she wanted Richard to buy her a new diamond necklace or when she wanted me to feel guilty for being sick.
"I was desperate, Maya," she choked out, reaching a trembling, skeletal hand toward me. "The debts were so high. The house was going to be taken. I panicked. A mother makes mistakes when she is terrified for her family. Please, say you forgive me. Don't let me die with this weight."
I looked at her outstretched hand, remembering the countless times she had used those hands to forge my signature or to push me away when I needed comfort. I did not step forward. I did not take her hand.
"You didn't panic, Evelyn," I said, my voice dropping to a quiet, lethal register. "You calculated. You sat in a study with my father and explicitly planned my death. You calculated how much my corpse would yield from an insurance payout. There is no misunderstanding to forgive. There is only the truth of what you are."
Her hand dropped back onto the thin blanket. Her eyes widened with genuine, absolute terror. She realized, in her final moments, that her manipulation had lost all its power. She was entirely stripped of her illusions.
"You are a monster," she hissed, a final flare of her true, venomous nature breaking through the facade of the dying mother. "You are just as cold as I am."
"No," I smiled, a genuine, peaceful smile that I felt deep in my soul. "I am much stronger than you ever were. Because I use my strength to protect people, while you used yours to destroy them."
I turned my back on her and walked toward the heavy steel door.
"Maya! Don't leave me alone!" she screamed, her voice cracking violently. "Maya!"
May you like
I knocked on the door. The guard opened it immediately. I stepped out into the hallway, leaving Evelyn Lawson alone with her cruelty, her failures, and the dark, empty silence of her final days.
The ghost was finally dead.
