I Died to End Their Lie novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Broken Glass
Jesse overhears the truth in the hallway, bleeds on his brother's rug, and learns his father already has the registry envelope.
The glass slipped out of my hand and broke on the hallway floor.
I had been standing outside my parents' bedroom for a full minute, shaking with fever, trying to work up the strength to walk to the kitchen.
On Tuesday a doctor had told me I had leukemia.
My first feeling had been relief, because I was only the kid they'd taken in, and a dead kid owes nobody anything.
Then I heard my mother's voice through the door.
"Maybe we went too far with Jesse when he was small," she said. "He looks at us like we're strangers now."
"What else could we do?" my father said. "Cade is the adopted one. If Jesse had known he was our real son, he'd never have stepped aside for him. Not once."
The glass hit the floor, and nobody in that room said another word.
When I was six, my mother had pushed me into a corner of the kitchen and told me I wasn't theirs.
Everything in the house was a favor, she said.
I had believed her for thirteen years.
I stood there with my hand still curled around nothing, and I started to laugh.
The bedroom door opened.
My mother stood in the gap in her robe, and the hall light showed every line of her face.
"What are you doing up? Have you lost your mind?"
"It slipped," I said, and crouched to pick up the pieces.
"You're so careless." She folded her arms. "Cade has his competition tomorrow. If you wake him, your father will deal with you."
"Tell him to clean it up and go back to that little room," my father called from the bed. "I'm tired of looking at him."
"You heard him," Mom said. "Clean it up."
She didn't ask why my face was burning, or why my legs were shaking so hard I couldn't stay down.
I closed my fingers around the biggest piece of glass.
It cut my index finger to the bone.
My blood doesn't clot anymore, and it ran down my wrist and dripped onto the cream wool rug.
Mom finally looked down.
She didn't look at my hand.
"That is Cade's favorite rug," she hissed. "Are you bleeding on it to make a point?"
I stared at the dark spot spreading in the wool.
For thirteen years I had been careful in that house not to take too much.
I never asked for new shoes or a ride or a birthday cake.
I never told anyone when I was sick, because I thought they would throw me out.
And all that time I had been the one who belonged.
I put my bleeding hand into my hoodie pocket and found my phone.
I pressed the red button on the voice recorder and left it running.
If they were going to talk to me like that, I wanted every word.
"I'm sorry, Mom," I said.
"You'll scrub it out before breakfast," she said. "Cade's teacher is coming at nine to hear his program."
"Yes, Mom."
I could have told her right then that I had heard everything.
I could have thrown the broken glass at the wall and screamed that I was her son.
So I said nothing.
If they thought I was still the boy who took whatever they handed him, I could watch them and learn what they would do next.
She sniffed and started to close the door.
A door opened at the other end of the hall.
Cade stood in the light of his bedroom, in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his dark curls flat on one side.
He walked over without a sound and put a clean towel in my hand.
"Press it hard," he said quietly. "Don't let it touch the carpet again."
"Cade, go back to bed," Mom said. "You need your sleep."
"I'm already up, Mom. I'll clean the floor, you two go back to bed."
He looked at me, and for a second his face was nothing but kind.
"Go lie down, Jess. You've looked like death since Tuesday."
He took the broom from the hall closet and started sweeping the glass himself.
My mother watched him with her whole face softened.
She had never once looked at me like that.
Behind me, my father's voice came out of the dark bedroom.
"Jesse."
I stopped with the towel wrapped around my hand.
"My study, eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
Mom went still in the doorway.
"The envelope from that donor registry is already on my desk," Dad said. "We'll talk about who you think your real parents are."
I hadn't told anyone about the registry.
The letter had come to the house that afternoon, and I had hidden it in my room.
Now my father had opened it.
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