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But I hadn't expected Vanessa to cover her face and burst into tears.
“Zoe, you still won't believe me? What girl would ruin her own reputation just to smear someone else?”
“You want me to take a paternity test? Isn't that just a slap in my face?”
The doctor who'd just examined Vanessa came out of the exam room and snapped at me.
“A pregnant woman shouldn't be put under stress. You're her friend. You should be taking better care of her.”
Vanessa kept her head down and said pitifully,
“Doctor, don't blame Zoe. It's all my fault. I shouldn't have let her fiancé force me...”
The doctor's hand tightened until his knuckles went white.
“Force you? Vanessa, if you need help, the hospital can call the police for you!”
Watching Vanessa put on this act made my stomach turn.
It was exactly like last time. Vanessa used that innocent face of hers to spread poison online.
On nothing but her word, strangers dragged Graham into the eye of the storm.
He didn't just lose his job. People tore through his hometown until nothing was left buried.
His parents, far away back home, were cursed at all day long.
Some people went even further. One of them actually livestreamed himself digging up the Henson family graves.
The man faced the camera with an air of righteous indignation.
“I want to see whether the ancestors who bred an animal like this were animals too!”
Graham couldn't bear the disgrace. He left me a suicide note and jumped to his death.
With her living target gone, Vanessa turned the blade on me.
She cried that I had set the whole thing up that night, arranged the chance for the two of them, that I was nothing less than an accomplice.
I was already drowning in grief over the sudden death of the fiancé I'd loved for years, and the endless abuse from those extremist strangers pushed me straight into severe depression.
Then, in my eighth month in the psychiatric hospital, Vanessa showed up in front of me on the arm of a man in his fifties.
She said, grinning,
“Sorry, Zoe. I got it wrong before. That night was actually my husband, not your fiancé.”
Remembering it, I let out a cold laugh.
“Vanessa, you won't call the police and you won't take a paternity test. So you think **you can just open your mouth and dump this filth on Graham's face?”
The people around us started to catch on too.
“That's right, girl. If you've got nothing to hide, a crooked shadow can't scare you. It's just a paternity test. Take it!”
Vanessa shook her head.
“You think I don't want to? But it's too early. For a paternity test I have to wait until four months.”
“I can't work these next few months. How am I supposed to support myself?”
Vanessa turned to me, her eyes bloodshot red.
“Zoe, and to think I treated you as my best friend.”
“I'm facing the hardest thing in my life right now, and your first reaction is to rush to prove yourself innocent!”
“You're so cold-blooded!”
With that, Vanessa ran crying out of the hospital.
My phone rang.
It was Graham.
“Zoe, believe me. That day I dropped Vanessa off at the entrance to her complex and left...”
“I believe you.”
I cut him off.
Graham went quiet for a few seconds.
“Let's call the police.”
I smiled.
“No rush. I've got an even bigger surprise waiting for her.”
