Again, she so wished Michael was here with her.
Dani sank down to the seat beside her and reached for her hand. “Sweetie, there was no stalker.” Dani sniffled and seemed to think about how to continue. “There are things about your sister that you don’t know. Things she didn’t want you to know. She was paranoid in her last days. She thought there was always someone after her, and she would sometimes see things that weren’t there.”
“Why?” She didn’t understand.
“Because she had a very aggressive brain tumor,” Dani said quietly. “She found out four months before the accident. She went to the doctor because she was having episodes. She had these terrible headaches, but even worse, she was seeing frightening things. She would see red eyes in the dark and think a demon was after her. She had a whole conversation with someone who wasn’t there. We were all worried about her. She thought she was going crazy.”
Vanessa shook her head as the implications washed over her. Her sister had been sick. Deathly ill, and she’d never said a word? “No. She would have told me.”
But would she? They’d talked on the phone, but Nicki hadn’t come to support her during the trial. She hadn’t come down when George had died. She’d made Dani the executor of her will.
Why would a thirty-five-year-old woman need a will unless she’d known she was dying?
“She didn’t want anyone to know. Even here at the office, she kept it quiet,” Dani replied. “She said there wasn’t anything you could do so to tell you would have hurt you.”
“Or it would have let me say good-bye to her. It would have given me the chance to stand by her.” But her sister hadn’t wanted that. She hadn’t wanted Vanessa at her side. Tears fell as everything slid into place. “She knew I would bring my problems with me, and she didn’t want me around.”
It was one thing to talk to her on the phone, quite another to have a real relationship with her.
“She loved you, but anything surrounding you was complex for her.” Dani seemed to weigh every word carefully. “It was the same with your mother. Your whole family, really. I think she thought she had more time. The tumor was inoperable, but the doctors said she could live a year or so. I had the cameras installed inside the house so she could be monitored. She didn’t want to go into assisted living. We made a plan. Eventually we would have paid for around the clock nursing so she could stay in her home. It didn’t turn out that way. We believe the tumor affected her driving that night.”
“I should have given her a driver.” Julian’s eyes were grim, his skin somewhat pale in the low light.
“She didn’t want one. She wanted to be independent for as long as she could,” Dani argued.
“There wasn’t a stalker?” She could barely wrap her head around the idea. For months she’d lived with this secret. A secret that was nothing more than an illusion.
“No. I don’t even think she spent more than a few minutes with Kyle. They didn’t spend time in the same circles. He was in training most of the time they were both in The Club. I’m sorry you found those writings. I thought I’d taken all of the journals she kept. I must have missed one. The others were quite disturbing,” Dani admitted. “I’m so sorry you found out this way.”
She took the tissue Julian offered her and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m…I don’t know what I’m feeling. Stupid, I guess. I should have seen this. I’m sorry I took the job under false pretenses. If it helps, I ended up liking it here. I’ll miss it.”
Dani’s eyes went wide. “Why would you miss it?”
“I told you. I lied.”
Dani’s hand squeezed hers. “And I kept the truth from you. You are one hundred percent forgiven. I understand why you lied. I don’t have any intention of firing you. I’ll pretty much do anything to get you to stay.”
She wasn’t fired? She could stay? She looked to Julian.
“I think you should hear me out before you make any decisions.” Julian frowned. “Now I understand why you had someone attempting to hack into The Club’s records. But that doesn’t change the fact that Danielle’s accounts are down over fifty thousand dollars, and each transaction was made from your system. I also have a report that details a blackmail scheme that was found on your system at your home. I’m willing to listen to explanations, Vanessa.”
She drew her hand back because part of that wasn’t her story to tell, and she was left reeling from what Julian had revealed. “Blackmail? On the computer at Nicki’s place? I haven’t been back in over a week. How would you know what’s on her system?”