Semua Bab My Bestie’s Mom, My Obsession: Bab 11 - Bab 20

It was nearly midnight when I found Cassandra sitting in the bathtub, still fully clothed.The bathroom lights were off. Only the glow from the hallway spilled in, casting her in soft shadows. Her knees were drawn to her chest, and her hair was wet, not from a shower, but from tears.She didn’t look up when I entered.I sat on the edge of the tub. Waited.Then quietly, like she was confessing to a priest, she said:“I was nineteen.”The room stilled.“I met Whitlock the summer I dropped out of school. He was older. Almost forty. Charming. Dangerous in a way that made you feel chosen.”She turned her head to the wall.“He offered me a way out. Out of this town. Out of my home. Out of my skin.”I didn’t interrupt.“But I wasn’t the first. And I wasn’t the last. He had a pattern. Girls with broken homes. Girls who looked up when he smiled.”Her breath caught.“I got pregnant.”The words crashed through me.“I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I lost the baby in my third month. Alone

The air in the house was still, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.Delilah Quinn had come and gone like a storm with no lightning, only the sound of past lives shuffling through the halls after her departure. And now, the letter Whitlock had delivered through Jason's hands sat like a live wire on the coffee table.I watched Cassandra read it again.Then fold it.Then unfold it again.“You don’t have to respond,” I said gently.She gave me a look that was half-exhausted, half-furious. “I responded the moment I let him have power over me all those years ago.”Her voice was steady, but her hands weren’t.“He’s not going to stop until he breaks me,” she said.Jason leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Then don’t let him. Break him first.”Her eyes softened slightly at her son. “You sound like your father.”He straightened. “He wasn’t always wrong.”She looked away. “He was never brave enough to tell the truth.”That night, we stayed up late, sitting in the kitch

Jason’s hands hovered over the laptop like it might detonate.The image file, Outtake_032.jpg, still glowed on the screen. Ethan stood behind him, arms folded tightly, heart hammering in his throat.The metadata was clear: timestamped, geotagged, encoded with a file structure that suggested not just a photo, but a pattern.And not just of Delilah.There were dozens of them.Each with a cryptic label.Each linked to a folder labeled “Echoes.”Jason clicked.Inside: rows of thumbnails. Women. Teenagers. Years of them. Images from various homes, studios, even school settings. Some laughing. Others posed in ways that should never have been archived.It was Whitlock’s secret museum.And Cassandra had never known it was sitting inside her forgotten inbox.Delilah returned that afternoon.Ethan met her at the porch.Her face was drawn, but determined. She wore no makeup. Her blonde hair was in a low braid. She carried a file folder tucked under one arm and a steel resolve in her eyes.“I saw

The image haunted everything.It lived in the glow of our phones. In the headline banners. In every whisper of “Did you see what they posted?” at the grocery store, the gas station, the town square.They’d leaked Leah Cartwright’s body.Her final moment, twisted into something obscene.They turned her death into a weapon, and now it was pointed at Cassandra.She couldn’t sleep that night.I found her in the den, curled in the corner of the couch, still wearing the clothes from earlier, her knees drawn to her chest, a mug of tea untouched beside her.When I entered, she didn’t move.Her eyes were fixed on the dark window.“I dreamed about her,” she said, her voice thin. “Leah. She was laughing. And then her mouth just... stopped working. Like she was trying to scream and no sound came out.”I sat beside her, gently. Close, but not touching yet.“I used to think survival was the win,” she whispered. “But now I think survival is just... another kind of sentence.”I reached for her hand.

It was Cassandra’s idea to go live.Not pre-recorded.Not edited.Live.No cuts. No filters. No room for anyone to say she rehearsed or doctored the truth.The setup was simple. Just a chair, a dark background, and a single soft light brushing across her cheekbones like dusk.Jason handled the tech. Delilah helped frame the story. I stood just behind the camera, hands clenched, watching her shoulders rise and fall with nerves she tried not to show.“I don’t want them to see me polished,” she said.“You look real,” I told her.She looked at me for a long time.Then she nodded.“Start it.”She opened with silence.For twenty seconds, she said nothing.Just looked into the lens, hands folded in her lap.Then: “You already know my name. You think you know the story. You’ve seen the photos. The footage. You’ve read the headlines.”Another pause.“But you haven’t heard the truth.”She spoke for twelve minutes.About Malcolm Whitlock. About the archive. About the girls. About Leah Cartwright