Chapter 4: What My Sister Actually Said
They left the kitchen.
I heard Michael's footsteps stop just outside the door.
I didn't tell him to move further.
Five minutes was five minutes.
I picked up my phone.
My sister's name was Lauren.
We had grown up sharing a bedroom in a small house in Ohio.
She had braided my hair the morning of my first school dance.
She had driven four hours to be in the delivery room when Emma was born.
She had held my hand through the worst night of my life when my father died, and she had not let go until I fell asleep.
I opened her message.
*I'm so sorry.
I know you're probably with him right now.
I know this is the worst moment.
I need you to know it was before you were engaged.
I ended it.
I told him I was ending it and I never went back.
I have wanted to tell you every single day since then.
I couldn't find a way that didn't destroy everything.
I know that was wrong.
I know sorry isn't enough.
But I need you to know I love you and I have hated myself for this every day.
Please don't disappear on me.
Please.*
I read it once.
Then I read it again.
Then I set the phone down and sat very still for a long time.
There was a sound at the door.
Not Michael.
Lighter footsteps.
Emma pushed the kitchen door open a few inches and looked in at me.
"Mommy?
It's cold in the car."
"Come here, baby."
She came to me and I pulled her onto my lap.
She was almost too big for it now, all long legs and sharp elbows, but she tucked herself in the way she used to when she was small and she put her head against my shoulder.
"Are you crying?" she asked.
"A little."
"Because of Grandma Diane?"
I smoothed her hair back.
"Because of a lot of things."
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "I don't like it here."
"I know."
"Can we go home?"
"Soon."
I held her and looked at the wall and thought about Lauren at nineteen, reckless and careless the way we had both been at nineteen.
I thought about Michael at twenty-six, charming and certain of himself, the way he had been when I first met him.
I thought about the summer I didn't know about.
The summer that had apparently happened in the same world where I was falling in love with him, completely unaware.
The door pushed open wider.
Michael stood in the frame.
"Emma," he said gently, "can you go sit with Grandma Diane for a few minutes?"
Emma looked at me.
I nodded.
She slid off my lap and walked past her stepfather without looking at him.
Michael came in and closed the door.
He sat down across from me.
He didn't reach for my hands.
He seemed to understand, without being told, that reaching for me right now was the wrong move.
"Ask me anything," he said.
"I'll answer everything.
No more managing it.
No more protecting anyone."
"Did you love her?"
He didn't look away.
"I thought I did.
For about three months.
Then I met you and I realized I hadn't known what the word meant."
"That's a very convenient thing to believe."
"I know."
"Did she know about me when it was happening?"
A pause.
A short one, but I caught it.
"Michael."
"She knew I had started seeing someone.
She didn't know it was you specifically until later."
"How much later?"
"After I proposed to you.
I called her and told her.
That's when she ended it completely.
She called me and said she never wanted to speak to me again and that if I ever hurt you she would tell you everything herself."
I sat with that.
"She protected me," I said slowly.
"In her own completely wrong and backwards way, she thought she was protecting me."
"I think so."
"And you let her carry that."
"Yes."
"You let her carry it alone for three years while she stood next to me at my wedding and held my daughter and came to Christmas dinner and pretended."
His jaw moved.
"Yes."
I stood up.
"I'm taking Emma home tonight.
I need you to stay somewhere else."
"Okay."
"I'm not saying it's over.
I'm saying I cannot look at you right now and think clearly at the same time."
"I understand."
"And Michael." I picked up my purse from the counter.
"When I'm ready to talk, I'm going to need the whole truth.
Not the version that makes you look least terrible.
All of it."
"You'll have it," he said.
I walked to the door.
Then I stopped.
Diane was standing in the hallway, Emma beside her.
The older woman looked at me.
For the first time all evening, she didn't look triumphant.
She looked tired.
"I didn't tell you to hurt you," Diane said quietly.
I looked at her for a long moment.
"Yes you did," I said.
"But it needed to come out either way."
I took Emma's hand and we walked out of the house together.
The cold air hit my face.
Emma leaned into my side.
My phone buzzed one more time in my pocket.
Not Lauren this time.
A number I didn't recognize.
May you like
A Chicago area code.
I stopped walking.
