Then she whispered,
“No… she knows.”
“Lily, come here,” I said softly, trembling. But she didn’t move. She kept whispering to Dad, as if telling him a secret only he could hear.
Rebecca turned slowly toward me, her face pale in the candlelight. “What are you doing here?” she snapped, circling the coffin. “I could ask you the same thing,” I replied.
“What are you doing here, Rebecca?”
She didn’t answer. For a long moment, the only sounds were the flicker of the lights and Lily’s soft voice. Then Rebecca reacted, took Lily’s arm, and led her away from the coffin.
“We’re leaving,” she said. Lily began to cry for the first time since the accident. “Let me stay!
Dad’s cold, he’s freezing!”
Rebecca’s grip tightened. I saw her tremble, not from sadness, but from fear. She dragged her outside, and I followed, demanding to know what was wrong.
“Why are you so scared?” I yelled. “Stop it!” she snapped. “You don’t understand!”
But I began to understand… when Lily said something that made my stomach churn.
“Dad said I shouldn’t get the car fixed that night,” she sobbed. “He told me beforehand… he said the brakes were fine.”
Rebecca froze. The official report said Dad’s car had faulty brakes.
They had ruled it an accident. But if Lily was right…
The next day I skipped school and started investigating. I found Dad’s repair receipts in the garage.
The last one—dated two days before the accident—showed the complete replacement of the brake system. Paid in cash. Signed by Dad.
When Rebecca arrived that afternoon, she found me standing by the workbench, holding the paper. Her face went pale. “Where did you get that from?” she whispered.
“It was right here,” I replied. “Why didn’t you tell anyone Dad fixed the brakes?”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me with that tormented expression.
Then she said softly,
“You don’t know what he did to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tears filled her eyes. “He was going to leave me. He said he couldn’t stand living like this anymore.
That he was going to take you two and start over.”
I gasped. “So you…”
She broke off, her voice cracking. “I didn’t want it to happen.
I just wanted to scare him so he wouldn’t leave. I loosened one bolt… just one. But he drove anyway.
I never thought…”
I stepped back, trembling, clutching the receipt. “You killed him.”
She collapsed to the floor, sobbing into her hands. “It was supposed to be just an argument,” she murmured.
“Not the end.”
Outside, I heard small footsteps. Lily stood in the doorway, silent, clutching
Dad’s picture. And I realized she had known all along.
For two days, the house felt like a silent battlefield. Rebecca barely spoke. Lily stayed close to me.
Every corner seemed to resonate with what we had discovered. I didn’t know what to do. Call the police?
Tell Mom? We had no solid proof, only her confession and the receipt. But every time I looked at Lily, I saw the truth in her eyes.
That night, Lily came into my room with her stuffed rabbit in her arms. “Can we go see Dad again?” she asked gently. I froze.
“Why?”
She hesitated, then said,
“He told me something that night. He said, ‘Protect your sister.’”
I stared at her. “What do you mean he told you that?”
“I mean,” she replied, “when I was with him, I remembered everything.
The night before he died, they were fighting in the garage. He told her not to touch his car again. I was hiding on the stairs.
I saw her turn something under the hood.”
My hands felt cold. “Lily… why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because she said if I did, she’d be gone forever,” she whispered. “And she didn’t want you to be alone.”
Something inside me broke.
My little sister had carried all of this, trying to protect us. The next morning, I made my decision. When Rebecca came downstairs for breakfast, pale and with sunken eyes, I handed her a folded note.
“You have to read this,” I told her. It was Dad’s last repair receipt… and Lily’s drawing from that night: a car, a woman with a wrench, and a little girl crying in the corner. Rebecca stared at it for a long time.
Then she said quietly,
“You’re going to the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But you can come with us. Tell them what happened.
Tell them it was an accident.”
She looked down, tears streaming down her face. “It won’t do any good. They won’t believe me.”
“Maybe not,” I said.
“But at least he can rest in peace.”
An hour later, Rebecca turned herself in to the authorities. Lily and I now live with our aunt in a small town two hours from the city. Sometimes, when she falls asleep, she still murmurs to Dad—little fragments of memories or dreams.
But she smiles more these days. At night, when the house is quiet, I stand by her door and think about what Dad asked her to do. He was right.
She protected me. And in the end… she set us both free.
