My mother was once a celebrated actress, bathed in the glow of the spotlight. But when my father’s first love returned from overseas, that glow soured, and the world branded my mother a homewrecker who had schemed her way to the top. She divorced my father and abandoned the career she cherished. Everyone said it was karma, that she was finally getting what she deserved. But it wasn't until after she died, when five videos she recorded before her death dominated the trending topics, that the truth finally began to claw its way into the light. 1 "Julie Whitlock is dead!" The exclamation ripped through the classroom chatter. The guy in front of me was staring at his phone, his face a mask of shock. I had been dozing, my head pillowed on my arms, but the sudden crescendo of noise jolted me awake. I lifted my head, blinking, and saw my classmates clustered together, their faces lit by the blue light of their screens, buzzing with excitement. Class wouldn't start for another few minutes. I glanced at my watch, stretched languidly, and, mimicking the others, pulled out my own phone. The words blazing across the top of the screen froze the air in my lungs. "Whoa, even the class hermit is rocked by this news," the guy in front of me said, turning around. "I guess it makes sense. Julie Whitlock was famously shameless. A homewrecker who bullied her way through every set. Who'd have thought someone like her would kill herself?" "Guilt, probably," someone else chimed in. "Everyone knows she stole Director Marsh's first love and basically forced her out of the country for years." "But she retired, right? Why commit suicide now?" "I don't know. Karma's a bitch, I guess." The discussion spiraled, their voices a chaotic symphony of speculation. The chirping gossip inside and the deafening drone of cicadas outside scorched my sanity. The sweltering summer air seemed to warp the world around me, bending it into a grotesque funhouse mirror. I sat frozen, silent. Beneath the desk, my hands clenched into fists so tight my nails bit deep into my palms, drawing blood. The shameless woman they were dissecting, Julie Whitlock… She was my mother. 2 My mother was the youngest actress to ever win the prestigious Golden Iris Award. She was also, by all accounts, the bravest. She was twenty-eight when she accepted the award, and on that very same night, during her acceptance speech, she announced her marriage to my father. The move was polarizing. Her fanbase hemorrhaged overnight. But it also earned her a wave of admiration. People called her genuine, spirited, a woman who lived by her own rules. As a celebrated screenwriter and an award-winning actress, their love story became the stuff of Hollywood legend. After I was born, my mother didn't slow down. She dove back into her work with a ferocious passion, and with my father’s unwavering support, she collected awards like they were sea shells on a beach. Directors lined up, desperate to catch a ride on her rising star. Among them was the woman who would ultimately be the architect of my mother's downfall. Lydia Marsh. Like my mother, she was a titan in her field. After studying film abroad, she made a name for herself with a unique and powerful visual language, racking up international awards while still in her youth. At the time, everyone believed a collaboration between Lydia and my mother would be a historic event, a bridge between domestic and international cinema. But then, a single piece of gossip shattered the calm. 3 Fame, reputation, the court of public opinion—they are all a double-edged sword. When you’re on top, everyone is your friend. But when you fall, they’re the ones pushing you down. During the theatrical run of their film, First Love, a rumor about my father, Graham Thorne, and the director, Lydia Marsh, began to spread like wildfire. The story was that the film’s protagonists, tragically separated by a cruel twist of fate, were based on them. And the villain of the piece, the malicious rival who spread lies, bullied the heroine, and drove her from her home? That was my mother, Julie Whitlock. The rumor was a cancer, a creeping rot that ate away at the public’s reason. Soon, the admiration for a young, brilliant actress curdled into a morbid curiosity, a collective hunger to see someone who had soared so high be torn from the sky, broken and bleeding. A flawless saint is admirable, but a twisted, fallen angel is far more entertaining. I was only five at the time, but I could feel the atmosphere in our home shift, growing heavy and cold. There was nothing I could do. I could only watch as my mother’s spirit frayed, as she wasted away, becoming a ghost of her former self. I thought, with the naivete of a child, that the storm would pass, that time would wash the scandal from public memory. But a few months later, the news of my parents' divorce pierced my world. 4 Due to her "deteriorating mental state," the court deemed my mother unfit to raise me. My father took me to his new home. And just like that, Lydia Marsh became my stepmother. She was much as I'd imagined. She wore rimless glasses and favored loose, bohemian-style linen shirts. At first glance, she projected an aura of gentle, intellectual warmth. But when I looked at her, all I could see was the hidden mass of an iceberg, the vast, deadly bulk of it concealed beneath a placid surface. The scandal had an unintended side effect: First Love shattered box-office records. Lydia Marsh became a household name. Meanwhile, the negative press about my mother became a relentless deluge. Bullying actors, sordid affairs, trading favors for roles, diva-like behavior on set—a torrent of accusations, some true, some fabricated, all stuck to her name like tar. In those days, you could say anything you wanted about Julie Whitlock, and the world would nod in agreement, adding their own poison to the pot. I never felt comfortable in my new home. I would wake from nightmares, crying out for my real mother. Whenever this happened, my father's face would harden. He would grip my shoulders, forcing me to meet his cold, unwavering gaze. "Cassia," he would say, his voice low and final. "Listen to me. From now on, Lydia is your mother." "But she's not—" "Quiet!" My father wasn't a man given to smiles, but he wasn’t prone to anger either. In my memory, he was always calm, unflappable, a man of few emotional waves. The sudden, sharp command startled the protest from my lips. I never dared to speak of it again. My intuition, a child’s unerring compass, screamed at me. None of this was normal. And there was a secret buried at the heart of it all, a secret I knew I must never, ever touch. 5 After the divorce, I hardly ever saw my mother. The only glimpses I got of her were through the cruel filter of the internet. She held a press conference. She admitted to everything. On camera, her hair was neatly combed, her clothes impeccable, but the raw, bloodshot state of her eyes betrayed the hell she'd been living through. Assailed by a barrage of questions from reporters, she announced her retirement from acting. The announcement was like throwing meat to sharks. The public, seizing the opportunity, launched into one final, brutal character assassination. And then, buried under an avalanche of condemnation, the name Julie Whitlock vanished from the world. Until fifteen years later, when the news of her death dragged her back into the spotlight. "Cassia? You're not even listening. This is huge… Hey, class is about to start. Where are you going?" Ignoring the voice calling after me, I grabbed my backpack and walked out of the classroom. On the way home, I called my father again and again, but every call went straight to voicemail. I tried Lydia, but her phone was switched off. A strange tide of unease washed over me. I tried to steady my hammering heart as I pushed open the front door to my house. "Cassia, shouldn't you be at school—" I didn't let Lydia finish. I brushed past her, my eyes scanning the house for my father. I pushed open the door to the conservatory, and the cloying scent of flowers hit me like a physical blow. I wrinkled my nose and stepped inside, searching. Finally, I saw him. He was resting in a wicker rocking chair, bathed in a sliver of sunlight pouring through the glass panes. "My mother is dead," I said, my voice flat. "Your mother is outside, preparing lunch." "You know that's not who I mean." I was ready to argue, but he opened his eyes. He looked me up and down, a slow, deliberate appraisal. Then he stood, and his hand shot out, clamping down on my shoulder like a vice. "Cassia Thorne," he said, his voice dangerously low. "Your mother is standing right behind you." My body went rigid. I turned my head, a slow, mechanical movement. Lydia was there, a smile plastered on her face. The dappled shadows of leaves danced across her features, twisting her expression into something grotesque and alien. The sunlight sliced the conservatory into geometric shapes of light and dark. He stood in the light, she stood in the shadow, and I was trapped on the line between them. 6 In the age of information, waves of public interest crest and crash with bewildering speed. A week later, my mother’s death was old news, forgotten by the masses. Just as before, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t pry a single piece of information about her from my father or Lydia. Our house was an island, completely cut off from anything related to Julie Whitlock. My questions and frustrations festered with no outlet. On the night that marked a week since her death, I snuck out into the backyard. I was going to light a candle for her, a small, secret vigil. Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the chime of my phone. A flood of notifications poured in, and my mother’s name once again commanded my attention. The trending topics were dominated by hashtags: #JulieWhitlockVideo, #JulieWhitlockResurrected, #JulieWhitlock, #SchoolBullying. My fingers shaking, I tapped on the first one. My mother's official social media account, dormant for over a decade, had just posted a video. The footage was grainy, clearly old. In the video, a girl with a high ponytail was on the ground, her clothes disheveled. Two pairs of feet were visible, relentlessly kicking and stomping on her body. After a moment of brutal violence and muffled sobs, a figure in the same school uniform emerged from behind the camera. She stepped forward, gently caressed the crying girl's cheek, and then, in a swift, vicious motion, grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head against the floor. The sound was a sickening crack. The screen went black just before the blood could stain the lens. The mysterious video sparked a firestorm online. The shocking content, the timing of the post, the fact that it came from a dead woman’s account—any one of these elements would have been enough to fuel days of frantic speculation. But as I watched it, a chill that had nothing to do with the night air crept down my spine. Others might be confused by the blurry footage. But I wasn't. I would know that silhouette anywhere. The figure who emerged at the end, the one who delivered that final, brutal blow… that was my mother. 7 A dead woman posting videos from beyond the grave became the internet's new obsession. Phone in hand, I found my father and shoved the screen in his face. "Don't tell me you don't know who this is." He was sitting under the small locust tree in the conservatory. He gave the screen a dismissive glance. The harsh sunlight glinted off his glasses, obscuring his eyes, but I could see his hands, tending to the plant, never once faltering. "Cassia, you should be in school." "Then you need to tell me what's going on. Why would Mom's account suddenly post a video like this with no context? People aren't stupid. It won't take them long to figure out—" "Do you think," he interrupted, his voice calm, "that what the person in that video did was right?" The unexpected question stopped me cold. My father stood up, his body blocking the sun. He reached past me and picked up a Blu-ray case from the table. It was Lydia's masterpiece, First Love. The cover art was famous: it didn't show the faces of the stars, only their backs as they stood in a swirling snowstorm, facing a warmly lit phone booth. Critics had called it a symbol of missed connections and eventual reunion. I didn't understand why he was showing it to me now. "Of course it wasn't right. But at a time like this, a video like this—" "Then should they have repented?" His voice was hoarse, his brow deeply furrowed. "Dad, what are you hiding from me?" My question seemed to pull him back to reality. He picked up the Blu-ray case, polished it absently with his thumb, and then pressed it into my hand. "That's enough. Don't overthink it. Go get some rest." 8 I was certain my father was hiding something. But getting the truth from him right now was clearly impossible. I spent hours online, digging through archives, searching for anything related to my mother's high school years. She was always a perfectionist. Even after deciding to pursue acting, she never let her grades slip. Her name and photo were regulars on the school's honor roll. In the photos, she wore a crisp white shirt, her shoulder-length hair neatly styled. She looked every bit the model student. Beneath one picture was a quote she had chosen as her personal motto at seventeen. "Despair is not an option. And so, farewell." It was a line from a Sylvia Plath poem. It felt jarringly out of place. As I scrolled through the school's archived website, a familiar name in a small information box caught my eye. Lydia Marsh. She had founded a photography club with a few other students. One of their projects had even won a local award. And my mother… had joined the club in the second semester of her junior year. I’d already suspected that Lydia and my mother knew each other from way back, given the whole "first love" scandal, but I never imagined they were in the same club in high school. If that bullying video was real, could Lydia have been involved? Could one of the two pairs of kicking feet at the beginning have belonged to her? And did their secret have something to do with my father? Who was the girl being beaten? And did any of this have to do with my mother's death? Staring at the list of photography club members, I was lost in a labyrinth of questions. 9 "Cassia? Were you looking for me?" Lydia stopped adjusting the lens on her camera and turned to me, a warm smile on her face. "Yeah." I pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her. She seemed completely at ease, nodding as if she were ready to give me her full attention. My fingers tightened around the recording pen in my pocket. I took a deep breath and showed her the video on my phone. She took the phone, her expression unchanging as she watched. When it finished, her gaze shifted back to me. "That was just something I shot for fun in high school," she said lightly. "You could say it was my first real foray into filmmaking." "The girl in it… the main one… that was my mother, wasn't it?" "Yes." She admitted it so readily that it threw me off balance. Perhaps a flicker of my confusion showed on my face, because a small, knowing smile touched her lips. "Cassia, are you curious about Julie? About your mother?" The tables had turned. She was now the one in control, and I didn't know how to respond. She stood up, walked behind me, and placed a glass of lemonade on the table before resting her hands gently on my shoulders. "We were the best of friends in high school. Inseparable. We even made a pact: I would become the world's greatest director, and she would be the world's greatest actress." She let out a soft sigh. "Unfortunately, Julie… she always had a terrible temper. You saw the video. She couldn't handle it when another girl was cast as the lead in the school play instead of her. So she took it out on her." "The girl in the video?" Lydia’s hands squeezed my shoulders gently. "Yes. The incident got pretty big, and our little club was quietly disbanded. After that, our ideals no longer aligned. We drifted apart." Her answers were so direct, her story so logical. I replayed it in my mind, searching for a crack, a flaw in the narrative, but found none. I must have been silent for too long, because Lydia circled around and knelt in front of me, taking my hands in hers. "I know this is hard to accept, Cassia. Your father didn't tell you any of this for all these years because he didn't want to hurt you." "What happened to the girl who was bullied?" I asked, my voice flat. Lydia’s grip on my hands tightened for a fraction of a second. She lowered her head, her expression unreadable, and sighed again. "She died."
? Continue the story here ?? ? Download the "MotoNovel" app ? search for "384639", and watch the full series ✨! #MotoNovel