The following day, he met with Evelyn again, at her small, cluttered house at the edge of town. The smell of stale cigarette smoke clung to the air, the flickering light from a dying lamp casting long shadows over the room. The woman, a rail-thin figure, sat hunched in an armchair that seemed to swallow her. She wore an over sized jacket that looked out of place, as though she had thrown it on in haste.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” the journalist said, offering a tentative smile as he sat across from her. Her eyes—sunken, tired—narrowed as she studied him.

She took a long drag from her cigarette, the orange tip glowing as it burned down to nearly nothing before she flicked the ash into a nearby tray. “I didn’t have much choice, did I?” Her voice was gravelly, tinged with bitterness, but there was a weary undertone that suggested a woman worn thin by years of something unspoken.

“I just want to understand more about David,” he said gently. “There’s so much about him that doesn’t add up. People here don't seem to remember him in all the same way.”

She exhaled smoke slowly, her eyes flicking away, like she was carefully choosing her words. "What do you think you're going to find?" She spoke in a low, steady tone, but the journalist couldn’t ignore the way her hands trembled slightly as she reached for another cigarette. “People think they know someone, but they don’t. They see what they want to see."

“Crystal spoke highly of him, said he was a devoted father.” He hesitated, watching for her reaction. “She mentioned that he used to leave. Go off on his own for periods of time. Why was that?”

Her thin lips twisted into a slight, almost sardonic smile. “She doesn’t know him at all, does she?” There was no warmth in her words, only the sharp edge of something deeper, darker. “He wasn’t some saint like she makes him out to be.”

The journalist leaned forward, eager for any more clues that might explain the contradictions surrounding David. “What do you mean?”

She took another drag from her cigarette, her eyes distant. “David... he wasn’t a saint. He had a way of getting people to believe what he wanted them to believe. He could twist things, make you doubt yourself, make you feel like you were the crazy one.” Her voice faltered for a moment, but she quickly covered it, her gaze flicking back to him. “But that’s not something Crystal would ever admit.”

The journalist’s pen hovered over the notebook. “So, you’re saying he manipulated people?”

“Control,” she whispered, her eyes darkening. “He always had control. Even when he was ‘gone,’ even when he was ‘taking breaks,’ he was always watching. Always keeping tabs on everyone. He needed to be the one in charge, the one people turned to.”

“And the children?” The journalist’s voice was gentle but probing.

She nodded absently, staring at the cigarette between her fingers. “They were his pride and joy. But they don’t know the truth. They didn’t see the other side of things. The side that could have their family undone.” She paused, her fingers tightening around the cigarette. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.” She sighed, looking down at her limp hand in her lap.

The silence between them stretched, and the journalist could feel a knot of discomfort tightening in his chest. Something wasn’t right. He sensed she was holding back—there were things she wasn’t saying, things she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—reveal.

“Can you tell me more about the way he treated you?” he asked carefully, sensing an opening. “How did he control you?”

Her eyes flicked to him, sharp now, like she was weighing the question. Then she shrugged, a small, almost imperceptible shift in her posture that spoke volumes. “He always made me feel like I needed him, like I was nothing without him. And for a long time, I believed it. I thought he was the only one who could understand me. But that was just his way. He always made sure I was just a little bit broken, just enough to keep me coming back.”

The air in the room thickened, her words sinking deep into the journalist’s thoughts. “And Crystal—how did she fit into all of this?”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Crystal was always blind to it. She saw him as this perfect, noble figure, and she built her life around that idea. She couldn’t see the man underneath. Not that I was any better, mind you. But at least I saw the truth. I didn’t let myself fall for the illusion.”

Staring up at the ceiling, she picked at a small scrape on her knee. "She doesn't even know why he chose her. How he used her to drive a blade into me."

She took another long drag from her cigarette, the smoke curling up around her like a fog. “But it doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s gone, and there’s nothing left but memories.”

The journalist leaned forward, sensing the delicate shift in the air. Her words had become quieter, more distant, like she was about to reveal something buried deep within her. He pressed on, his voice steady.

"Can you tell me more about your childhood? What was it like growing up with him?"

Evelyn’s eyes flickered briefly toward him before shifting to the wall. She seemed lost in thought for a moment, her hands trembling as she smoothed the worn fabric of her jacket. Then, she exhaled deeply, the bitter smoke swirling around her before she spoke.

“We fought endlessly,” she muttered, her voice soft but thick with resentment. “It was like... like we couldn’t ever get along. Every day was a battle. He had this way of making everything my fault, you know? Nothing was ever good enough for him. Not even me.”

The journalist’s pen hovered above the page, watching her closely. He could hear the weight of her words, and he wanted to understand. “What do you mean? What was it that he wanted from you?”

Evelyn’s lips tightened, her gaze narrowing in on something far away. “He wanted me to be normal. To blend in, like everyone else. He couldn’t stand the idea of anyone seeing anything wrong with him, and I—” she paused, bitterness flashing in her eyes “—I was his biggest problem. I was a constant reminder that something in his life wasn’t perfect. That’s why he kept pushing me, making me fit into this mold that I could never squeeze into.” She let out a hollow laugh. “He didn’t want to be embarrassed by me. Not at school. Not in front of his friends.”

She stood abruptly, pacing across the room, her thin figure cutting a sharp silhouette in the dim light. The cigarette dangled from her fingers as she moved, her words coming out faster now, almost as if the act of speaking was releasing something pent-up inside her.

“I hated him for it,” she spat. “For making me feel like I wasn’t good enough, like I was a freak.” Her voice quivered, but she didn’t seem to care. “He forced me to hide everything—my quirks, my... differences. Made me act like I was like everyone else, just so he could look good. He thought if I didn’t embarrass him, maybe he could actually have the life he wanted. A perfect, shiny life where nothing was ever out of place.”

The journalist’s brow furrowed as he watched her. Her words were filled with so much anger, so much pain, and yet it was clear that even after all these years, she was still struggling with it all.

“It sounds like you two really couldn’t find any common ground.”

“No," Evelyn muttered, looking down at her feet as if she were ashamed of something only she could see. "We never did. There was always this wall between us. He tried to keep everything together, make it all look good, but underneath... underneath, there was nothing. Nothing but bitterness. Nothing but control.”

She stopped pacing and turned back toward him, her eyes now searching his face. “You don’t understand. He was always... always making sure I knew I was the problem. And when I didn’t conform, when I didn’t do what he wanted, it was like he couldn’t even look at me anymore. He’d go off, disappear for days or weeks, leaving me to wonder where the hell he’d gone. But I always knew. I always knew it wasn’t just about getting away from me—it was about getting away from everything he couldn’t control.”

The journalist paused, his notebook forgotten as he absorbed her words. The pieces were starting to come together, but they didn’t quite make sense. There was so much she was hinting at, so much beneath the surface. And yet, she wasn’t giving him all of it. And hadn't she spoken of loving him when they were children?

"Did things ever change between you two? After all that?"

Evelyn’s lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. She shrugged, the movement was sharp, almost agitated. “Maybe for a while. After Mom died, he... he tried to take care of things. I guess he thought he owed me something, for all the years of pretending. But it was too late. By then, I was already used to him being distant. To him being cold.”

The journalist could feel the tension in the room. There was a deep ache in her voice, a yearning for something that she had never gotten from her brother. “But you never reconciled?”

She shook her head slowly, her face hollow. “No. Not really. How could I? How could I ever forgive him for making me hate myself? For making me feel like I was nothing but a burden to him? I can’t forgive that.”

There was a long silence between them as she sank back into the armchair, her eyes staring at the floor. The flickering light cast long shadows across her face, emphasizing the hollow, haunted expression she wore. Her hands were clasped tightly together, the knuckles white from the tension.

The journalist shifted in his seat, his thoughts racing. The contradictions were becoming harder to ignore. Evelyn’s version of David painted a man who had been controlling, manipulative, and distant. A man who used his sister as a tool to create a perfect image of himself. But Crystal’s version was that of a devoted husband, a loving father.

Something was off. And the more he listened to Evelyn, the more the puzzle pieces refused to fit together.

Evelyn’s eyes glazed over as she began to speak again, her voice lowering to a near whisper as the weight of her memories seemed to pull her deeper into the past. She took another drag from her cigarette, her hand shaking slightly as she held it between her fingers.

“There were times,” she began, her voice softer now, as if she were talking to herself. “Times when it was just us. No one else. No pretending. No masks. Just David and me.”

The journalist stayed silent, watching her intently, unsure of what she would say next.

“I didn’t have to be the ‘normal’ version of myself then,” Evelyn continued, her gaze distant. “I could be... me. For the only times in my life. We’d talk, laugh... we’d stay up all night, just... just being. It was like a kind of magic, you know? I could feel it, in the air, in the way he’d look at me. We were close, closer than anything I had ever known. It felt real. Like I wasn’t broken. Like I was... whole.”

Her lips trembled as she spoke, and she quickly looked away, her eyes drifting to the cracked window. A long silence stretched between them, and the journalist could feel the tension in the room, the weight of her words hanging heavily in the air.

“But it was a lie,” she whispered, her voice hollow, and the sense of loss in her words was palpable. She looked down at her hands, trembling, the cigarette nearly forgotten between her fingers. “It was all a lie. He took everything from me. The one thing I thought I could have for myself... the one thing that felt real... and he ripped it away. Gave it to someone else. To someone who didn’t even deserve it.”

Her words cracked like glass, and the journalist sat back in his chair, his pen paused in midair. He didn’t know what to say. Evelyn’s pain was so raw, so deep. There was something unspeakable in her words, something that she couldn’t bring herself to reveal.

“I don’t even know why he did it,” she muttered, almost to herself. “He gave me the most beautiful of gifts, something I didn’t even know I could have, and then... he took it. He took it and gave it away. Just like that. To someone who didn’t understand. Didn’t need it. And he never explained why. Never told me why.”

The room was heavy with the weight of her words. The journalist opened his mouth to ask more, to press for details, but something about her expression—so resigned, so lost—made him hesitate.

“Evelyn... what was the gift?” he asked quietly, his voice barely more than a breath.

She shook her head slowly, her eyes clouding over with pain. “I can’t. I can’t tell you. It doesn’t matter now.”

The journalist was silent for a moment, feeling the loss of that answer. But there was something in the way she said it—something in the way she held herself—that told him she was ready to tell him. But he knew that it was the piece he needed to understand everything.

“I just... I can’t believe he did that to me,” Evelyn whispered, her voice breaking. “I gave him everything. And he gave me nothing but loneliness in return.”

She dropped her cigarette into the ashtray, her hands trembling as she curled them into fists in her lap. “He always knew how to make me believe in him. How to make me trust him. And when I did, when I gave him all of me... he took it. He took it and never looked back.”

The journalist watched her carefully, the pieces of the puzzle slowly starting to shift in his mind, but each one seemed to lead him down another dark, twisting path. There were so many layers to this story—so much hidden beneath the surface.

He didn’t know how to respond, so he stayed silent, allowing Evelyn the space to breathe, to gather her thoughts. The air between them was thick with unsaid things, and as the silence stretched on, he felt like he was on the edge of something he couldn’t quite grasp.

Finally, Evelyn spoke again, her voice quiet but firm. “It’s too late for me. I’ll never get back what he took. What he gave me and then took away."

She stood up, lighting another cigarette as she walked over to the window. She lifted the edge of the curtain and considered the darkness beyond.

"But the children... they will never know. They don't need to know who he really was. Let them believe in the man Crystal thinks he was. There is no value in the truth.”

The journalist nodded, understanding that she wasn’t talking about just David's children now. She was talking about herself, about the painful process of facing the truth of the man she had once called her brother. But there was still so much she wasn’t saying—so much that remained locked inside her, hidden beneath layers of old wounds.

“And the truth... you don't think they'd want to know?” he asked gently, feeling the weight of her gaze on him.

She met his eyes then, and for a moment, the sharpness in her look was almost tangible. “It doesn't matter what they want. Life is like that. Someone else often gets to decide for you.”

With that, she fell silent once more, her gaze turned inward as she seemed to retreat back into the dark recesses of her mind. The journalist, unsure of how to proceed, sat back in his chair, his mind racing with the fragments of her story.

There was a part of him that wanted to press her further, to demand the details of that gift she had spoken of, but he knew better. Some things—some truths—weren’t meant to be uncovered, not yet. Not until Evelyn was ready.

“I still don’t understand why he never left you, though,” the journalist asked quietly. “Why did he stay with you all those years, instead of with Crystal and the kids?”

She turned and went back to her chair, knotting herself up onto it. Letting the silence settle between them, she tugged the jacket down to cover her bare legs. The she looked at him again, her gaze sharp. She leaned forward slightly, as though sharing something she knew would stick with him. “Because it was easier."

Leaning back into the chair, she made soft noises to herself. Occasionally, he thought there were words mixed up in the sounds, but he didn't know what she could be saying. 

"What was easier about it?" he asked.

"He could control me. He could keep me in line, make sure I never went too far off the path. With Crystal... it was different. He had his fingers deep into her. She never did anything he didn't want her to even when he wasn't around. And the kids... they were just another thing he used to hold power over people.”

Her words hung heavy in the air. The journalist couldn’t shake the feeling that Evelyn had just given him a glimpse of something dark—a piece of the puzzle that no one else had dared to talk about.

"Why did he need to keep you in line?" he asked.

"I'm his prize. The secrets he could never let out," she whispered.