Chapter 4: Unearthing the Final Truth
Caleb froze, his eyes darting between Katherine and the dark water below. The raw sincerity in Katherine's voice seemed to crack through the thick armor of his rage. He looked down at his own hands, trembling violently, realizing how close he was to becoming the very monster he claimed to hate.
Robert crept forward slowly, extending a hand. "Come on, son. Let's go home. Let's handle this as a family. No more secrets. No more blood."
With a broken sob, Caleb’s knees gave out. He collapsed onto the pavement of the bridge, burying his face in his hands. Robert instantly rushed forward, wrapping his strong arms around his son, pulling him safely away from the ledge. Grace dropped to her knees beside them, crying tears of sheer relief, holding her shattered family together on the cold concrete.
Katherine stood a few paces away, watching them. She didn't intrude. She knew that despite her innocence in the cosmic scheme of Caleb's trap, her presence was still a trigger for his pain. She quietly walked back to the car, sitting in the passenger seat, wrapping her coat tightly around her.
The ride back to the house was somber. Nobody spoke. The wedding decorations in the garden now looked like mockery—deflated balloons, empty bottles, and wilting white flowers.
They gathered in the living room. The silence was broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock. Caleb sat on the sofa, a blanket over his shoulders, looking completely drained. The manic energy of revenge had left him, leaving behind only the hollow shell of a boy who had never properly grieved his first love.
"We need to find out everything," Grace said softly but firmly, sitting opposite her son. "No more half-truths. Frank, you stayed in Oakhaven after graduation. You knew Beatrice’s family well. Is there something we missed?"
Frank, who had been quiet the entire night, stepped forward from the kitchen doorway. He held an old envelope in his hand—one he had retrieved from his own car during the chaos. His face was heavy with remorse.
"There is something Caleb doesn't know," Frank said, his voice trembling. "Something Beatrice’s mother hid from everyone because she couldn't bear the shame of it."
Caleb looked up, his brow furrowed. "What are you talking about? The diary explained everything. Kit bullied her."
"The diary was only part of it, Caleb," Frank said, handing the envelope to Caleb. "Beatrice’s mother gave this to me years ago, asking me to destroy it. I couldn't bring myself to do it, but I never wanted to hurt you with it. But seeing what’s happening tonight... you need to know the whole truth."
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Caleb opened the envelope with trembling fingers. Inside was a medical report and a final letter from Beatrice that had been intercepted by her mother before the police could find it.
As Caleb read the words, his eyes widened in shock. Beatrice hadn't ended her life just because she lost the scholarship. The letter revealed she had been suffering from severe, undiagnosed clinical depression for years, a condition her strictly religious parents had refused to acknowledge or treat, choosing to blame her academic pressures instead. She wrote that losing the scholarship was simply the final straw that broke her already fragile mind, but she explicitly wrote: 'Don't blame Kit. She only revealed a truth I was hiding. The darkness was already here long before she arrived.'
