Faking It With The Hockey Star

Justin’s POV

"No one is leaving this house until somebody tells the truth."

Grandma’s words echoed heavily through the room. Nobody moved. Nobody even seemed to breathe.

Then I stood up. "I can’t do this."

Everything inside me felt far too heavy: the diary, the police outside, Lilian’s sudden appearance, and the unyielding look on Grandma’s face. None of it made sense. I took one step toward the hallway, desperate to clear my head.

Warm fingers slipped around my hand, stopping me in my tracks.

"Justin."

I looked down to find Harper looking up at me. She gently squeezed my fingers.

"Please... sit down," her voice was soft, an anchor in the middle of the storm. "So we can finally know the truth."

I closed my eyes for a second, letting her words anchor me, then slowly nodded. "Okay."

I sat back down beside her on the sofa. Across the room, Lilian still stood frozen near the entryway. I looked at the woman who had practically helped raise me.

"Auntie Lilian..." My voice cracked, raw with emotion. "If there’s something you know... please. Tell us. I just want this to end."

The moment those words left my mouth, Lilian burst into tears. She dropped to her knees right there on the rug.

"No!"

I was beside her before I even realized I had moved. "Auntie..." I held her shoulders carefully, terrified she might collapse completely. "What are you doing?"

She grabbed my hands, her own shaking uncontrollably. "I’m sorry, Justin. So... so sorry. I should have said something years ago. I should have protected all of you."

My chest tightened until it hurt. "Protected us from what?"

Before she could answer, Diane rolled her eyes dramatically from her seat. "Oh, please. What exactly is she supposed to say? This is ridiculous."

Richard turned toward her, his jaw set. "Diane."

She ignored him completely. "This woman disappeared years ago. Now suddenly she comes back and everyone is treating her like some kind of reliable witness?"

Richard’s voice became firmer, rising above hers. "Diane."

Still, she kept talking, her words growing faster and sharper. "This is insane. I’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t even know why—"

"Enough."

Richard’s voice thundered through the grand room like a crack of thunder. For the first time since I could remember, she actually stopped talking mid-sentence.

"This doesn’t concern you right now," he warned.

She stared at him, genuinely stunned. "What?"

"I said... be quiet."

She slowly sat back down against the cushions. I frowned, watching them closely. Dad had never spoken to her like that before. Not once in all the years they had been together.

Grandma nodded gently toward Lilian. "Go on."

Lilian wiped her tears with the back of her hand, taking a shuddering breath. "It started..." She swallowed hard, struggling to find her voice. "...about twenty years ago. It was shortly after Miss Diane started working with Mr. Richard. At first, everything seemed normal. She was always helping around the office, always smiling, always offering to carry files, to prepare meals, to bring tea. I thought she was just trying to be useful."

She looked down at her tremble-ridden hands. "I never questioned it. Why would I? Mr. Richard had a wife, and they all worked together. I didn’t think anything of it." She paused, her chest heaving slightly. "But after a while, I started noticing something strange."

I leaned forward from my knees. "What?"

She looked toward my father, her eyes filled with old guilt. "Every time Mr. Richard ate something Miss Diane prepared, he would become sick."

Dad frowned, his brow furrowing deeply. "What?"

"It wasn’t serious at first," Lilian explained. "Just headaches, stomach pains, and sometimes sudden dizziness. We always assumed it was stress because you were working such long hours. So no one questioned it."

Diane laughed nervously, sitting up rigid. "Oh, for goodness’ sake! So now you’re blaming me because someone had headaches?"

I looked over at her. She wasn’t laughing anymore; underneath the sudden outburst, she was visibly panicking.

Lilian continued, her voice low and steady. "I kept telling myself I was imagining things because it happened too often, but I couldn’t prove anything. So I stayed quiet." She took another shaky breath. "Five years passed, and nothing changed. Then, one afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and saw Miss Diane standing over Mr. Richard’s lunch. I asked her what she was doing."

Diane immediately leaned forward, pointing aggressively. "I was helping!"

Lilian looked right back at her. "You were holding a packet I had never seen before. I asked what it was. You smiled and told me it was medicine that the doctor had prescribed." Lilian lowered her eyes back to the floor. "I believed you. The packet looked familiar, like medication I had seen around the house before. So I walked away. I told myself I was imagining things again."

The room had become deathly quiet. Even Ethan wasn’t saying a word anymore, sitting frozen beside Vanessa.

Lilian’s voice became smaller, barely above a whisper. "But not long after that, everything in this family started changing."

Diane suddenly shot to her feet, her chair scraping sharply against the floor. "That’s enough!" She pointed a shaking finger directly at Lilian. "You’ve been making up stories from the beginning! You have absolutely no proof!"

"Sit down."

This time, the commanding voice didn’t belong to my grandmother. It belonged to me.

I slowly stood up to my full height. Every single eye in the room turned toward me. I looked directly at Diane, meeting her panicked stare.

"You’ve interrupted every single sentence she’s spoken," I said, my voice coming out far calmer than I expected. "You’ve answered questions nobody asked you, and you’ve tried to stop her from talking since she walked into this room."

I took one deliberate step closer to where she stood.

"So for once... sit down. You’re going to stay in that chair, and you’re going to let her finish."

The room fell completely silent. For the very first time in my life, Diane actually looked afraid of me. She slowly lowered herself back onto the couch without another word.

No one said a thing. Not even Grandma.

I looked back down at Lilian, offering her a subtle nod.

She took one trembling breath, looked up into my eyes, and whispered, "That was the beginning."

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