Daphne’s POV
I find Nina in her room three days after we tell the twins about Maya. She's sitting on her bed, legs tucked under her, holding something blue against her chest.
When I get closer, I recognize it—Maya's scarf. The soft blue one she wore constantly, that must have gotten tucked behind the couch cushions and forgotten.
Nina's crying quietly, tears streaming down her face as she clutches the fabric like it might bring Maya back if she holds it tight enough.
"Sweetheart." I sit on the edge of her bed, and Nina immediately buries her face in the scarf, her small body shaking with sobs.
"I keep thinking about all the things she did with us." Nina says, voice muffled by fabric and tears. "She fixed my dragon. She played castle. She let me show her every single drawing."
Nina looks up at me, face blotchy and wet. "Was she pretending the whole time? Was I stupid for believing her?"
My heart cracks clean down the middle. "You weren't stupid, Nina. You trusted someone who seemed trustworthy. That's not your fault."
"But I loved her." Nina's voice breaks on the word. "I loved her and she was lying about everything. How do I know when people are real?"
I hold her tighter, trying to figure out how to explain betrayal to a five-year-old. How to tell her that sometimes people who seem to care about you are lying. That sometimes love isn't enough to make people stay.
"Maya left because she was lying about who she was and why she was here," I say carefully. "She wasn't honest with us about important things. And when people aren't honest like that, when they hide big things, we can't keep them in our family."
"But she played with us." Nina's fingers twist in the scarf. "She made Lisa smile when Lisa was sad. She was nice to us."
"I know." My throat tightens. "Sometimes people can seem nice and still be doing things that aren't okay."
Nina pulls back to look at me, and the question in her eyes makes me want to lie. Want to tell her Maya loved them completely, that the betrayal had nothing to do with them.
But I can't give her false comfort that will shatter later.
"Did Maya ever really love us?" Nina asks.
I pause, considering my answer carefully.
"I don't know, sweetheart. Maybe she did care about you and Lisa, even while doing bad things. People are complicated like that. Sometimes they can have real feelings and still make terrible choices."
"But she lied about who she was."
"Yes. She did."
"And that's not okay."
"No." I stroke Nina's hair, feeling her breathing slowly calm against my chest. "It's not okay. What Maya did—lying, hiding who she really was, hurting our family—none of that was okay."
Nina nods against my shoulder. After a moment, she hands me the scarf. "Can you throw this away? I don't want it anymore."
I take the soft blue fabric, and it feels like holding evidence of every lie Maya told. "I'll take care of it."
That evening, I find Lisa in the living room. She's moving methodically between pieces of furniture, her lips moving as she counts silently.
Then she walks to the kitchen, counting tiles on the floor. Back to the living room, counting the minutes on the clock until dinner.
I watch her for several minutes before interrupting. "Lisa? What are you doing?"
She doesn't stop counting, just continues her circuit while answering. "Counting makes things feel safe."
"Safe how?"
"When you can measure things, you can predict them." Lisa moves to the window, counts the panes of glass. "Steps from the couch to the kitchen: seventeen. Tiles in the hallway: thirty-two. Minutes until dinner: forty-eight. Those things don't change. They're always the same."
"But people change," I say quietly, understanding where this is going.
"People lie." Lisa's voice is flat, matter-of-fact. "You can't predict people who lie. You think you know them and then they're someone else. So I'm counting things that stay the same instead."
The logic is devastatingly five-year-old. Count what you can measure because people are too unreliable to trust.
"Lisa…"
"It's okay, Mommy." She turns to face me, and there's something ancient in her eyes. "I understand now. Maya taught me an important lesson about probability and risk assessment."
The words are too adult, borrowed from somewhere—probably one of Xander's business conversations she's overheard. But the meaning is clear: trust is dangerous, and Lisa is building walls to protect herself.
After dinner, both twins find Xander and me in the living room. They stand in front of us holding hands, Nina's face tear-streaked, Lisa's expression serious.
"We've decided something," Nina announces.
"What's that, sweetheart?" Xander asks.
"We don't want to love people who leave anymore." Nina's voice wavers but holds steady. "It's not a good strategy."
"The data suggests," Lisa adds with that same terrible adult language, "that investing emotional resources in people who aren't permanent leads to significant psychological distress. We're implementing a new policy of limited attachment."
I look at Xander across the living room. See my own devastation reflected in his face. Our daughters are building emotional walls at age five because adults keep failing them.
First their biological father's threats that brought us together. Now Maya's betrayal. They're learning that trust is dangerous, that loving people who leave causes pain they'd rather avoid.
"Come here." Xander opens his arms, and both girls move to him. He pulls them close, one on each side. "I understand you're scared. And it makes sense—Maya hurt you. She made you feel like you couldn't trust people."
"But we're not leaving," I add, moving to kneel in front of them. "Daddy and I—we're staying. Always. No matter what."
"You can't promise that," Lisa says with brutal honesty. "People die, people leave. You can't control those variables."
"You're right," Xander admits. "We can't control everything. Bad things might happen. But we can promise that we're choosing to stay. That we're choosing you every single day. That you're worth staying for."
Nina starts crying again. Lisa doesn't cry, just counts something on her fingers—probably calculating the statistical probability that we're telling the truth.
That night, after everyone's supposedly asleep, I check on the girls before bed. Nina's room is empty. I find both of them in Lisa's bed, curled together under the covers, holding hands even in sleep.
Something breaks inside me seeing them like that. Five years old and already learning to protect each other because the adults in their lives keep proving unreliable.
I climb into the bed carefully, fitting myself around them. Pull them both close and whisper promises into their sleeping heads.
"We're not going anywhere. Daddy and I love you. We're staying. You're safe. We're a family. We're staying."
I repeat it like a mantra, like saying it enough times might make them believe it in their bones the way they clearly don't believe it in their heads.
When I finally return to my own bedroom, Xander's awake. He takes one look at my face and opens his arms. I collapse into them, and we hold each other without speaking.
Maya's betrayal didn't just hurt us. It hurt our children in ways we're only beginning to understand. Taught them lessons about trust that five-year-olds should never have to learn. Made them calculate risk and build walls when they should be learning to open their hearts.
"They're so little," I whisper against Xander's chest. "They shouldn't have to be this scared."
"I know." His arms tighten around me. "I know."
We fall asleep like that, holding each other against the weight of what Maya's lies did to our family. Tomorrow we'll try again—make more promises, show more consistency, prove through actions that we mean it when we say we're staying.
But tonight we just hold each other and grieve for the innocence our daughters lost because someone we trusted turned out to be a weapon aimed at everything we love.