Chapter 4 - The House of Lies
The interior of Vanessa’s house was a temple of beige.
The walls were painted a color called "desert sand," the floors were a pale, white-washed oak, and every piece of furniture was covered in light linen or boucle fabric. There were no toys on the floor. There were no drawings on the fridge. The air smelled of eucalyptus, beeswax, and the faint, chemical undercurrent of the dry-cleaning fluid Vanessa used to keep her linen sofas spotless.
On the large, circular coffee table in the center of the living room, a professional ring light was set up. Propped in the center of the light was Vanessa’s iPhone, its screen dark but its camera lens pointed directly toward the sofa, where a neat arrangement of wooden toys and organic cotton blankets had been prepared for a shoot.
Rachel walked into the center of the room. She stood beside the sofa, her muddy sneakers leaving two dark, damp prints on the pale wool rug.
Vanessa closed the front door, the click of the lock sounding incredibly loud in the silent house. She walked into the living room, her arms crossed over her chest, her slippers making no sound on the floor.
"Rachel, you're tracking dirt onto the rug," Vanessa said, her voice dropping the singsong tone, becoming flat and hard. "And you didn't answer me. What are you doing here?"
Rachel turned around. She held up the plastic bag, the dark brown braid sliding inside the synthetic pocket.
"You cut my daughter’s hair, Vanessa," Rachel said.
Vanessa didn't flinch. She sighed—a long, dramatic, long-suffering sound—and walked over to the coffee table. She picked up her phone, her fingers tapping the screen to check her notifications before she looked back at Rachel.
"Oh, please," Vanessa said, waving her hand dismissively. "Don't be so dramatic, Rachel. It was an accident. The girls were playing beauty parlor in Chloe’s room. I had stepped into the kitchen to prepare some organic elderberry tea, and they got into the crafting scissors. You know how kids are at that age. They think it's funny."
"They were crafting scissors?" Rachel asked.
"Yes. Simple plastic-handled scissors. Lily must have started it, and Chloe—"
"Lily’s hair was cut with a pair of nine-inch professional shears, Vanessa," Rachel said, her voice still low, still terrifyingly calm. "The cut at the back is a single, clean line. Crafting scissors can't cut through three inches of hair in one stroke. And they certainly don't leave three-inch scratches on a child’s scalp."
Vanessa’s jaw tightened, the muscles along her perfect jawline shifting under her skin. "I tried to fix it, okay? Once I realized what they had done, I tried to even it out so she wouldn't look ridiculous. I was going to call you, but I knew you'd overreact. You always do."
"You cut her ear," Rachel said.
"It was a nick! She was squirming. If she had sat still—"
"She's six years old!" Rachel’s voice finally rose, not to a scream, but to a vibrating, metallic ring that seemed to rattle the crystal drops on the light fixture above them. "You held my daughter down in your bathroom, and you cut her hair off because you couldn't stand the way she looked next to your daughter."
"That is insane," Vanessa hissed, her face turning a sudden, ugly red beneath her makeup. "You are being completely paranoid, Rachel. I have three hundred thousand people who look to me for advice on how to raise children. I don't need to justify myself to you."
"Three hundred thousand people," Rachel repeated. She walked over to the coffee table, her eyes falling on the phone in Vanessa’s hand. "That's what this is about, isn't it? The brand. The golden mornings."
She reached out, her hand moving so fast Vanessa didn't have time to react. Rachel snatched the phone from Vanessa’s fingers, her thumb instantly hitting the home button.
The screen was unlocked.
And it was not on her home screen. It was on a live broadcasting interface.
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Vanessa had been in the middle of a live Q&A session with her followers when Rachel knocked. She had set the phone down on the table, face up, assuming Rachel would stay in the entryway.
The camera had been recording the entire conversation. The comments were scrolling by at a dizzying, frantic pace—thousands of strangers watching the perfect, golden life of Golden Morning Mama crack and splinter in real-time.
