YARA I find Yasmin in her room that night.
The fire has long since burned itself out in the garden urn, whatever she destroyed already ash by now, scattered and unrecoverable.
She sits at her vanity, brushing her hair like nothing happened, like she didn’t spend the evening carefully unraveling a version of me for Rhett to believe instead of the real one.
“You lied to Rhett.” I close the door behind me, no preamble.
“About Colt Callahan.
About letters that don’t exist.” She doesn’t even turn around.
Her hand keeps moving, brush through hair, slow and unhurried, as though I’ve interrupted nothing more urgent than an evening ritual.
“I only told him what I saw,” she says, mild, as if the words cost her nothing at all.
“You didn’t see anything.
There’s nothing to see.
I never knew that man.” My voice rises, and I don’t try to stop it, don’t care anymore who might hear through the walls.
“You made it up.
All of it.
The letters, the doubt, the tears, every single piece of it was built, and you built it because Dean’s been asking questions about a dead man from Texas and you needed somewhere else to point him.” “I only told him what I saw,” she says, mild, as if the words cost her nothing at all.
“You didn’t see anything.
There’s nothing to see.
I never knew that man.” My voice rises, and I don’t try to stop it, don’t care anymore who might hear through the walls.
“You made it up.
All of it.
The letters, the doubt, the tears, every single piece of it was built, and you built it because Dean’s been asking questions about a dead man from Texas and you needed somewhere else to point him.” Something flickers across her face at that, quick, gone almost before I register it, and for half a second I think I’ve actually landed something real, cracked some piece of the performance loose.
Hope flares in my chest, small and desperate.
“That’s a very specific accusation,” she says, setting the brush down slowly, deliberately, her tone almost amused.
“For someone who has absolutely nothing to back it up.” She’s right, and the truth of that sits like a stone in my chest, heavy and immovable.
I have a scarf hidden in my dresser drawer.
I have a phone call I overheard through a door.
I have a login screen that points at my own father instead of at her.
I have fragments that only make sense if she’s guilty, and not one single piece of it would survive being said out loud to anyone in this house who isn’t already inclined to believe me.
The unfairness of it burns worse than the accusation itself.
“I don’t need proof to know what you did,” I say anyway, my jaw tight, my voice thinner than I want it to be.
“No,” she agrees, turning finally to look at me, her expression sweet and sorrowful and utterly composed, almost pitying, as though she’s the wounded party here and I’m the one who has wandered into her room to inflict harm.
“You just need to be right.
That’s always been enough for you, hasn’t it?
Being right, even when nobody else agrees with you.
Even when it costs you everything.” “You’re twisting this.
Again.” My hands curl at my sides, nails biting crescents into my palms.
“I’m not twisting anything, Yara.
I’m just watching you stand in my room, at nearly midnight, accusing your own sister of lying about a man neither of us has ever met, with nothing to support it but a feeling.” She shakes her head slowly, her voice heavy with false sorrow, each word measured for maximum effect.
“Do you hear yourself?
Do you understand how that sounds to anyone who isn’t you?” I have no answer for that.
That’s the whole terrible genius of what she’s built, I understand now, watching her sit there so calm and untouchable, so entirely at ease in the wreckage she’s made of my evening.
She hasn’t just planted doubt about tonight.
She’s made my own certainty look like the unstable thing, made my insistence on the truth read as exactly the kind of behavior that would make a family start to wonder about a girl like that.
The realization settles over me like a slow, suffocating weight.
“You’re going to keep doing this,” I say, quiet now, exhausted, the fight draining out of me even as the anger stays lodged somewhere deep.
“Whatever it takes.” “I don’t know what you mean,” she says, her face smooth as glass, utterly untroubled.
“Yes, you do.” The softness drains out of her face all at once, vanishing like water through a cracked vessel, and what’s left underneath is colder than anything I’ve seen from her yet, flat and precise, no performance left in it at all.
My breath catches at the sight of it, at how easily the mask comes away and how little I recognize what’s beneath.
“Be careful, sister,” she says, her voice low, even, stripped of warmth, each syllable deliberate.
“People who call me a liar tend to regret it.” The words land in the room like something dropped from a height, and the silence afterward feels thick enough to choke on.
I don’t move, don’t breathe, watching my sister’s face hold that flat, dangerous stillness for one long, unbearable second, my pulse hammering in my throat.
Then, as fast as it came, it’s gone.
Her eyes fill again, glossy and wounded, her hand rising to press against her chest as though she’s the one who’s been wronged, as though I have somehow reached across the room and struck her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice trembling, soft and broken, catching artfully on the edges.
“I don’t know why I said that.
I just, I love you, Yara, and it hurts so much that you think this little of me.” I stand there staring at my sister crying real tears over a threat she made half a breath ago.
Her hand still trembles against her chest, her breath catching on cue, and the sight of it settles something cold and certain in me, a clarity I almost wish I didn’t have.
I am not dealing with someone who loses control of her own face by accident.
I am dealing with someone who chooses, every single time, exactly what she wants me to see.
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Add to library！ Creation is hard, cheer me up!
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Give me more motivation!