Chapter 274

Melody’s breath caught as a sudden thought slammed into her. A thought that was so wild that it could not possibly be true. Her lips parted slightly, as if the words were struggling to find form, and then she clenched her hands, drew in a long breath and asked directly,”Are we related?”
Marianne’s composure cracked. Her eyes widened just enough to betray the shock and fear over Melody’s guess. The silence that followed was deafening.
Melody saw it. And in that moment she saw everything in that pause. Had found all the answers.
She took a step closer, to her mother and asked directly. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been looking into her. Why you’re suddenly obsessed with knowing who raised her, where she came from. This isn’t just about furniture. Or taste. Or admiration.”
She motioned around them. “You suddenly want to live here. Out of nowhere. After all these years of being on the monve, you now want to settle down here. And what’s the first thing you do? You start refurnishing everything. You pick LuxeArt. Her firm. And you’ve met her. Despite what you just said, you have met her. Haven’t you?”
Marianne didn’t speak. Her hands were still, her coffee forgotten.
Melody took another step forward. “This isn’t a coincidence. It can’t be. She looks exactly like me. And you know it’s not just a passing resemblance. It’s enough that anyone who sees us side by side would do a double take. It’s why you stared at the catalogue the way you did. It’s why your face changed when I said her name.”
Her voice faltered for a moment before strengthening again. “Tell me the truth. Is Melanie… is she related to me?”
Marianne opened her mouth, then closed it again, her jaw working as if the right words simply wouldn’t come. Her silence, Melanie felt pressing down on her, heavier with each second that passed.
“Does she know?” Melody whispered, her voice raw now. “Does she know? That we are related? Or is this some secret you’ve been carrying alone, waiting for the right time to come clean?”
Still, Marianne said nothing. But her eyes—her eyes were full of something Melody had never seen before. Not fear. Not guilt. But a deep, complex sorrow.
And that was all the confirmation Melody needed. “So, she does know? Is that why she was snapping at me today? Did you meet and tell her? Are you not going to tell me mother? You’ve never been at a loss in the past. Why the sudden silence now? Because if you don’t tell me now, I will go and ask Melanie.”
Melody turned sharply, heading for the door instead of towards her mother. But just as her hand reached the doorknob, her mother’s voice rang out desperately,”She doesn’t know! She doesn’t know of any relations and she does not know me.”
The words hit like a stone against glass.
Melody froze. Slowly, she turned, eyes wide. Marianne was standing now, one hand gripping the back of her chair, the other trembling at her side. Her face was pale, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“She doesn’t know,” Marianne repeated, softer this time, almost broken. Then, closing her eyes, she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids, as if trying to hold herself together. A tear slipped free, and she wiped it away quickly. “Please,” she said, gesturing toward the seat across from her. “Please sit down.”
Melody didn’t move. “I’m fine standing.”
“No,” Marianne said, firmer now. “Sit. What I’m about to tell you might change everything. And I need you steady when you hear it.”
Melody hesitated, her heart pounding. A part of her wanted to keep standing, to maintain some distance, some control, but something in her mother’s face had changed. This wasn’t the polished, composed woman she had grown up with. This was someone on the edge of something.
She walked back slowly and sat.
Marianne took a deep breath, steadying herself as though she were about to walk across a tightrope. “Melody… Melanie is your older sister.”
Melody didn’t move. She didn’t dare to blink. An older sister?
Marianne nodded at her stunned face and then continued. “She was kidnapped when she was a young. You don’t remember her because you were too young. She was only four when we lost her. Even you used to cry a lot, looking for your sister. That was the biggest reason we moved for the first time. Because you used to keep looking for her in the corners where you used to play. And even I… the biggest reason, I never wanted things to change was because of her memories.”
The room seemed to tilt. Melody stared, her brain scrambling to keep up. “You… what? Kidnapped?”
Marianne nodded, her voice thick with emotion, “She was six four years old. Your grandmother and I had a bog row regarding something she had done. She felt that I was not raising the child right. I told her to stay out of it and walked away. I thought it was done and over with. But then the next morning, she was just gone. I went in to check on her, and her bed was empty. The police suspected an abduction, but there was no forced entry, no ransom. Nothing. We never thought to look for Melanie at her grandmother’s place.”
Melody sat frozen, lips parted, her mind racing.
“It was almost a week later that the police finally finished checking through the suspects, the employees and everyone else that they finally questioned if anyone other than the usual people had access to the house and we mentioned her grandmother…”
“And that was when we discovered that the old woman had sold her house and moved away. A woman who had lived forty years in a single neighborhood had moved away overnight…For no given reason… And that is how we knew who took our Melanie away. But by then, it was too late. The lead had gone cold. And we had lost Melanie.”
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