My Sister Tried to Stab Me at My Baby Shower, and Then I Learned My Husband and Mother Had Been Helping Her Turn My Life Against Me

That semester there had been a girl in my sorority named Bethany who made everything into a competition. If I mentioned liking a guy, she would flirt with him. If I got a good grade, she would loudly compare hers. If I liked a club or internship, she somehow ended up pursuing it too.

It had driven me crazy.

I had definitely written about Bethany. About being exhausted by the constant competition. About trying to get ahead of it sometimes by moving first.

What if someone took those entries and replaced Bethany’s name with Vanessa’s?

I looked back at the journal photos.

It was possible.

Horrible, insane, elaborate, but possible.

“Blake,” I said, “when exactly did your mom find these pages?”

“I don’t know. She said last month when she was going through your old stuff.”

“And when did Vanessa first start talking to you about all this?”

He hesitated. “About three weeks ago. She called me crying and said she needed to tell me something she’d been holding in for years.”

Three weeks ago.

Right around when my mother supposedly found the journal.

“Did my mom and Vanessa start spending more time together recently?”

“Yeah. Vanessa’s been going to your mom’s Sunday dinners. She mentioned it.”

Sunday dinners I had not been invited to because I had been too tired and too pregnant to drive across town. Dinners where my mother and sister apparently got closer while constructing a case against me.

“Blake, I think Vanessa made all of this up. The screenshots are fake. I know they are because I never sent those messages. And I think the journal pages are real pages that were altered.”

“That’s a pretty elaborate accusation.”

“So is accusing me of seven years of psychological warfare.”

He sighed. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. But I need space, and I think you should stay away from the house for now.”

“I’m eight months pregnant. Where exactly am I supposed to go?”

“I don’t know. But if even half of what Vanessa is saying is true, I can’t have you around until we figure this out.”

I had the strange sensation of talking to a stranger wearing my husband’s voice.

When we hung up, I looked at Lacy and said, “I need a locksmith. First thing tomorrow.”

“What about Blake’s key?”

“He can ring the doorbell if he wants to come home.”

I barely slept.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Vanessa lunging at me. I heard my mother saying maybe it was time I experienced consequences. I felt the baby shifting inside me as if she too knew nothing around us was safe.

At seven the next morning, I called a twenty-four-hour locksmith.

He said he could meet me at the house by nine.

Then I called my OB and explained that I was under severe stress and needed to make sure the baby was okay. She told me to come in at noon.

At 8:30, Lacy drove me to my house.

Blake’s car was not there.

My mother’s was.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Lacy asked.

“No. Stay in the car. If anything gets crazy, call the police.”

I unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

I could hear voices in the kitchen before they saw me.

“She can’t keep living here,” Vanessa was saying. “It’s my house too, or it should be. If she hadn’t stolen Blake…”

My mother’s voice, low and steady: “Once the baby comes, we’ll make sure Blake understands his options.”

His options?

I walked into the kitchen.

Both of them jumped.

“What are you doing here?” my mother demanded.

“I live here,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Vanessa stood up. She looked awful. Puffy eyes, messy hair, no makeup. But there was still something calculating in her expression that made my skin crawl.

“Did Blake tell you to stay away?” she asked.

“Blake does not get to tell me to stay away from my own house.”

“It’s his house too,” my mother snapped. “And he has concerns about your mental state.”

I laughed.

It did not sound stable, even to me.

“My mental state? Right. Not the mental state of the person who stabbed a cake forty-seven times and tried to attack a pregnant woman.”

“You’re twisting what happened,” Vanessa said.

“There were fifty witnesses and at least thirty phones recording it.”

“You caused all of this,” she shot back. “If you had just been honest from the beginning—”

“Honest about what? I still do not understand what you think I did.”

“You stole my life!”

She screamed it so hard the words seemed to hit the walls.

“Everything I wanted, you took. And now you’re sitting here pretending you don’t know.”

“I didn’t steal anything. Blake and I fell in love. That isn’t theft.”

“You knew I was going to ask him out. I told you.”

“No, you didn’t. Vanessa, I swear to you, you never told me you had feelings for Blake before last night.”

She yanked out her phone and started scrolling furiously.

Then she thrust it at me.

“This. Look at this.”

It was another screenshot. A text exchange right before Kendall’s party. In it, Vanessa was telling “Natalie” about a guy she liked who would be there. “Natalie” wished her luck.

Except I had never sent that message. And even in my panic, I noticed the interface was wrong. The timestamp said 3:00 a.m., which made no sense for the conversation she was describing.

“This is fake too,” I said. “Look at the timestamp.”

Then I pulled out my own phone and opened our actual thread from that year. I had never deleted anything.

“Here’s our real conversation. You asked if I was bringing a date. I said no because I’d just broken up with Josh. You never mentioned a guy.”

“You deleted the real messages.”

“Why would I delete some and not all of them?”

“Because you manipulate things!”

She was breathing hard again, nearly shaking.

“This is what you do. You lie and twist everything and make everyone think you’re perfect when really you’re—”

She stopped.

“I’m what?” I asked.

She looked at my mother, then back at me.

“You’re a thief.”