“She has always been jealous of me. She tries to take everything I have.”
“What have I ever taken from you?” I asked.
“Everything!” she snapped. “You were always the intelligent, responsible daughter. Even when Mom and Dad praised me, they compared me to you.”
Jake looked horrified.
“Olivia has never behaved improperly toward me. She has only been my supervisor.”
Melissa accused us of having a secret relationship.
I almost laughed.
“I discovered your connection two days ago from Jake’s emergency contact form.”
Then I asked the question that mattered.
“Why did you deliberately keep both of us unaware? Why place your boyfriend inside my company and hide the relationship?”
Melissa claimed she only wanted Jake to have a good career.
My mother shook her head.
“Then why didn’t you simply tell Olivia?”
Jake’s expression suddenly changed.
“Melissa asks me about work constantly. Specific clients, campaigns, presentations…”
He stopped.
“Oh God.”
I looked at him.
“Your boutique’s new marketing campaign closely resembles a confidential strategy Meridian developed for the Stratton account.”
Melissa waved the accusation away.
“They’re common marketing ideas.”
“No,” Jake replied. “The targeting method was proprietary. Olivia designed it.”
Melissa’s irritation turned into arrogance.
“So I borrowed a few ideas. That’s how business works.”
“That may qualify as corporate theft,” I said.
My father looked physically ill.
“You used Jake to obtain information from your sister’s company?”
“I didn’t steal anything. He shared it because he loves me.”
Jake stood.
“I shared those details because I trusted you. I thought you cared about my work. I never imagined you were using me to monitor your sister.”
For the first time, my family could no longer dismiss the situation as a misunderstanding.
I told them this was not about one dinner or one employee. It was part of a pattern that had shaped our entire lives.
Melissa rolled her eyes.
“Here comes perfect Olivia.”
“I’m not perfect. I’m simply tired of being blamed for things that never happened.”
Then I mentioned my Harvard application.
My mother looked confused.
“What about Harvard?”
During my final year of high school, I had been placed on the waiting list despite excellent qualifications. Later, I learned that someone had called the admissions office, pretended to be me, and withdrawn my application.
The call came from our family home while I was away at a debate competition.
Melissa had been the only person there.
My father turned toward her.
“Did you do that?”
After a long silence, she nodded.
“Everyone was proud of her. She was going to leave, and I would be forgotten.”
My mother covered her mouth.
“How could you?”
“It worked out,” Melissa insisted. “She attended another good university.”
“That is not the point,” my father said. “You intentionally damaged your sister’s future.”
I continued.
Melissa had also forged diary pages to convince my high-school boyfriend that I had cheated on him. Two weeks later, she began dating him herself.
She had spread rumors about my work ethic when our grandfather considered offering me a position in his consulting firm.
She told Jake I had been removed from our grandparents’ trust for disrespecting them.
My mother immediately corrected her.
“The trust was divided equally.”
Jake looked at Melissa with growing disgust.
“Have you been creating a fictional version of your sister throughout our entire relationship?”
Melissa began crying.
“You don’t understand. She was always the perfect one.”
“I was never perfect,” I said. “I was simply living my life while you turned me into the villain of a story I didn’t know you were telling.”
PART 3
My mother looked at me through tears.
“All those family gatherings where we believed you caused trouble…”
Melissa tried to defend herself.
“They weren’t lies. They were different perspectives.”
“Faking diary entries is not a perspective,” Jake said. “Withdrawing someone’s college application is not a perspective.”
My father asked Melissa how many accusations she had invented over the years.
She said nothing.
My mother’s voice broke.
“We believed you every time without asking Olivia for her side.”
“Because Melissa was your favorite,” I said quietly. “It was easier to assume I was the problem.”
Then my mother revealed something I had never known.
After Melissa’s birth, she had suffered severe postpartum depression and could not bond with her. I had been four years old and helped care for my baby sister, singing to her and sharing my toys.
By the time my mother recovered, guilt had convinced her that she needed to compensate Melissa for those lost years.
My father admitted they had protected her too much.
