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Apparently being sisters mattered when I was expected to forgive Lina.
Nobody had seemed nearly as concerned about sisterhood when Lina started sleeping with my husband.
Mom continued.
“She deserves to be happy too.”
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.
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