The Mark of Chance••√•• Pure Love

chapitre : 5

The next morning, the light filtering through the kitchen's electric blinds was mercilessly clear. It pitilessly illuminated the dark circles under Léna's eyes, sitting stiffly before her espresso, and the closed-off face of Chris, standing by the window contemplating the overly perfect garden.

Marina came down the last steps, each one an effort. She had slept in fits and starts, haunted by the echoes of the nighttime conversation. "You knew I felt nothing for you." Those words had carved a chasm inside her. She felt complicit without having committed a crime, guilty of a truth she hadn't sought.

"Good morning," she murmured as she entered the room.

Léna turned her head towards her. Her gaze was no longer that of the previous night, broken and humiliated. It had turned cold, hardened by a night of burning resentment. A thin, forced smile stretched her lips.

"Good morning, Marina. Did you sleep well?" The question was a knife wrapped in silk.

"Yes, thank you," Marina lied, heading for the coffee machine, feeling the weight of Chris's gaze on her back. She didn't dare look at him.

"Perfect. I didn't sleep at all."

Silence fell again, heavy and thick. Chris finally turned around.

"I'm going to the office," he announced in a neutral voice, carefully avoiding looking at either woman.

"So early?" Léna shot back, poison in her voice. "Eager to flee your home, my dear?"

He clenched his jaw. "I have work."

And without another word, without a glance at Marina, he left. The front door slammed shut, a definitive sound that made Marina jump.

Léna waited for the sound of the car to fade. Then she set her cup down with a sharp clink.

"So, you had a good night?" she repeated, and this time, the steel pierced through the silk.

Marina froze, her hand on her cup. She understood. Léna knew. She knew she had overheard. Perhaps she had seen her shadow in the hallway. Perhaps she simply guessed, driven by a jealousy that had become prescience.

"Léna..." Marina began, desperately searching for words.

"Don't say anything," her sister interrupted. "Nothing you could say interests me."

She stood up and positioned herself in front of the large picture window, her back to Marina. Her body was a line stretched to breaking point.

"Do you remember, when we were little?" she said in an oddly distant voice. "You always had what I wanted. That doll, the blonde one with the blue dress. Mom gave it to you. I got the brunette. I hated the brunette."

Marina remembered. The doll. One day, Léna had taken it and "accidentally" cut its hair down to the roots.

"One day, I took it, and I damaged it. So you wouldn't want it anymore. So you'd suffer from losing it, like I suffered from never having it."

She turned around, and her face was distorted by ancient bitterness.

"Chris, it was the same thing."

The name fell like a condemnation. Marina felt an icy cold wash over her.

"I saw him looking at you, three years ago, at that party. You didn't even notice him, of course. Too busy playing the ingénue. But I saw him. His gaze... it was as if he had just found the only star in a black sky."

She sneered, an ugly, joyless sound.

"So, I went to him. I talked to him. I put myself in his path. And he was so polite, so kind. But his eyes were always searching for your silhouette in the room."

She approached the table, placing her hands flat on it, her knuckles white.

"One day, I told him clearly. I said: 'She will never see you. You're not her type. But I want you. And if you go near her, I'll tell her you're harassing her. I'll tell her you're obsessed. I'll shatter that perfect image you have of her. She will hate you.'"

Marina brought a hand to her mouth, horrified. The threat was vicious, typical of Léna.

"He tried to resist, of course. He told me: 'I can't. I feel nothing for you.'" She imitated Chris's calm voice with perfect cruelty. "'And I told him: 'I don't care. We'll have a beautiful life. You'll end up loving me.' I was so sure of myself. So sure I could conquer his heart."

Her voice finally broke, betraying the pain gnawing beneath the anger.

"But even now... even after the marriage, this house, everything... I haven't succeeded. Nothing. He's further away than ever. And that... it breaks me."

Her eyes, bright with unshed tears, fixed on Marina with pure hatred.

"And you, you're here. You show up with your beaten-dog look and your 'weary' heart. And I see it, you know. I see his gaze settling on you as if he's just woken up. As if you were his oxygen. This invitation... I thought it would be a good idea. To show you how successful I was. To show you the man I had won. But the opposite is happening. I've inflicted upon myself the spectacle of my own failure."

Marina was petrified. The puzzle was finally coming together, forming a monstrous picture. Her sister's marriage was a house of cards built on blackmail and jealousy. And she, without knowing it, was the cornerstone.

"Léna... I... I didn't know," she stammered, helpless.

"Of course you didn't know!" Léna spat. "You never see anything! You're so absorbed in your own little self, your little disappointments, that you're blind to what's happening around you! But him... him, he only sees you. From the very beginning."

She straightened up, wiping away a tear that had dared to fall with a furious gesture.

"Now you know. You know everything. So do me a favor, Marina. Do me a favor for once in your life. Go home. Let me try to salvage what's left of my marriage. Let me try to repair what your very existence has cracked."

The words were unfair, cruel, but Marina was too stunned to defend herself. She slowly nodded, tears in her eyes.

"Alright," she whispered. "I'll pack my bag."

She turned on her heel and left the kitchen, feeling her sister's burning gaze on her back. On the stairs, she stopped, her heart pounding. She understood everything now. Chris's coldness wasn't indifference; it was suppressed pain. His marriage was a prison.

And she, Marina, was the ghost haunting the corridors of that prison, the impossible love eating away at the bars.

The weight of this revelation was crushing. She no longer wanted coffee. She only wanted one thing: to flee. To flee this house, flee the truth, flee Chris's desperate gaze and Léna's desperate hatred.

But as she closed her bedroom door, she knew that a part of this truth would remain stuck to her, like a tenacious shadow. The game of appearances was over. And in the ashes of this morning after, something irreparable had just been consumed.