Avery's Game Of Revenge-Chapter 136: Doppelganger

"Wait... Jon, what do you mean by what you said just now? You once checked out a picture of this... Ava Donovan in a bikini. What for?" 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Jon blinked at his wife’s face, feigning confusion.

"Why else would I check it out? I had to search out who this girl is, on the day my daughter started worrying over her. What is so wrong about that?"

"Nothing," Kathy shook her head, though the suspicions in her eyes didn’t clear off. "Just asking."

Just at that moment, Valentina, who finally found the selfie, exclaimed, "Found it! This was taken earlier today," she added.

She passed the device to Roberts who sat closest to her.

"You’re sure this girl didn’t find an old picture of Avery and post it?" he questioned, his eyes widening in shock.

"Now you ask that," she chuckled, a smug look crossing her face. "Avery wouldn’t wear something like that. And as I said earlier, that selfie was taken today so rule that out of your mind."

Standing up, Brian yanked the phone out of Robert’s hand, his face contorting into a frown as his eyes descended on the displayed image.

"This smile... This looks a lot like Avery but there’s something off about her. The eyes? It seems cold, somehow," he observed.

Kathy rose, extending her hand for the phone. She still thought her daughter, son, and Brian had to be joking or perhaps, they had a problem with their eyes. How similar could this girl look to Avery that they all had their jaws slacked in mere seconds after seeing the image?

"Let me have it," she demanded and the phone was handed over to her, albeit reluctantly. As she lowered her eyes to the screen, her grip on the device loosened and it fell out of her hand, only to be caught by Jon who had actually been eager to see the picture.

As soon as he saw it, recognizing the face on it, his heart exploded in a mixture of excitement and anticipation. However, he did a good job of keeping those feelings from announcing themselves on his face.

"This isn’t Avery," he stated, his voice like a sharp knife that pierced the silence in the room.

"What do you mean?!" Valentina was almost screaming. "You can still say that after seeing her face?"

"Yes," Jordan declared, his tone daring everyone else in the room to challenge his observation. "This can’t be Avery. Not only is the eyes different, but like you said, that girl wouldn’t dress like this. The face also, it doesn’t look like that of someone who was in a fatal accident recently."

"I agree with Dad," Roberts said. "But I’ll apologize for what I said earlier. Your worries, I mean, thinking this girl was Avery, they were valid. More than valid, if I may say. Anyone would have thought that if they were faced with a striking doppelganger of a cousin they had a hand in killing. You had the right to be scared."

Valentina scoffed, "If you two can see very well that she really looks similar to Avery. Why are you still insisting she isn’t the one then?"

"Because doppelgangers exist," Kathy deadpanned, her voice still shaken. Her words pulled everyone’s attention to her. "We also can’t conclude she is Avery just by seeing her face. Taking Roberts previous arguments into consideration, you can see that apart from her similar face, nothing else points to the fact that she’s Avery." The words settled on Valentina’s skin like a cascade of cold water, but instead of calming her down, they only added to the tension in her nerves. "Besides, has this girl ever crossed or approach you on a personal note? Either to get closer to you or to get on your bad side?"

Valentina shook her head. "No, apart from earlier today when she confronted me, I can’t say she has ever crossed me."

Kathy nodded.

"What she did, would you blame another coworker for doing that if you left such ’hateful comments’ as you called what you dropped on her page, on their own page?"

Valentina shook her head again.

"Anyone would have reacted like that. Her actions weren’t unwarranted."

Roberts shrugged, cutting in abruptly, "Then I think it’s settled. You said she didn’t interfere with you until you crossed her and dropped those incriminating comments on her page, and that anyone else would have reacted the way she did. That means she’s anyone else, but Avery."

"I support that conclusion but still," Brian cut in, "We can’t rule out the fact that she might be related to Avery."

Valentina rolled her eyes and hissed. "What do you mean related to... Wait, that’s true. Just like us, Avery wasn’t actually a McCAllum." She laughed out loud, relief echoing in her voice, "Oh my goodness, this is the puzzle that has been disturbing me for weeks now? How could I have ruled that option out?" She snatched her phone from her father, and rose to her feet. "Shouldn’t this meeting be over? I made a mistake of overthinking, now we have all analyzed it and seen it’s impossible, then let’s go rest." She turned to her brother, "By the way, Rob, I think you should discard that body unless you want to start a morgue business soon. To further reassure everyone, I will make research on that Ava Donovan from my sources. I didn’t want to do that before because I was scared I would end up finding the truth. But now that I know there’s barely any truth to find, I will do that just to put my mind at rest."

Kathy leaned back in her chair, "Well, I wouldn’t say I’m not relieved. I guess I can leave for church now."

"And I can return to what I was doing before this urgent meeting was called," Roberts rolled his eyes.

Brian chipped in, the fear in his voice seeping out into the atmosphere. "Why do I feel we should dig deeper into this girl’s background? The possibility of her being Avery has been ruled out of course, but it’s even more suspicious that this girl decided to come to a country where her face is hated."