Amelia was standing by the front door listening to every word.
I refused to argue in front of her.
Instead, I crouched down and hugged her.
“Have fun, baby.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
As they headed outside, Mom muttered under her breath,
“You could at least behave like a sister for one day.”
I closed the door before I said something unforgivable.
My other three children were already fighting over what to watch on television.
I curled beneath a blanket on the couch and tried desperately not to imagine the wedding taking place three towns away.
Ryan at the altar.
Lina dressed in white.
My parents smiling proudly.
Everyone celebrating as though there had never been another wife.
Another sister.
Another family.
Another baby.
I closed my eyes.
And immediately heard Ryan’s voice from the day everything fell apart.
I had come home early from grocery shopping.
Ryan hadn’t heard me enter the house.
He was standing in the kitchen talking on the phone.
His voice was soft.
Affectionate.
The voice he once used with me.
“I love you, honey. I’ll see you tonight at the usual hotel.”
I stopped walking.
My hands tightened around the grocery bags.
Then Ryan laughed.
“I’ll come up with something to tell her. She believes everything I say. She’s such an idiot.”
One of the bags slipped against my wrist.
A glass jar of pasta sauce crashed onto the tile.
Ryan spun around.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
He stared at the red sauce spreading across the floor.
Not at me.
Not at the pregnant belly beneath my shirt.
At the broken jar.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked.
He exhaled.
“Annie…”
“Who?”
He didn’t bother making up a lie.
“Lina.”
My mind refused to process it.
“My sister?”
Ryan slowly sat down.
“We never planned for this to happen.”
I would come to hate that sentence.
People say things like that after betraying someone, as though infidelity is some kind of accident that simply happens to them.
As though they slipped and accidentally booked hotel rooms.
Accidentally lied.
Accidentally fell into bed together again and again.
I stared at him.
“How long?”
Ryan rubbed his forehead.
“Almost a year.”
Almost a year.
I was pregnant with our fifth child.
Our other four children were upstairs.
And almost twelve months of lies suddenly had a name.
Lina.
My younger sister.
—
I filed for divorce soon afterward.
Ryan moved out.
Lina stopped speaking to me.
