Chapter 4
“If you need a piece of paper to believe me after five years together and a pregnancy we planned down to the month, then we have a bigger problem than Marlo.”
We drove home without eating Thanksgiving dinner.
That night, I cried in the bathroom so Elias wouldn’t hear me.
Marlo texted around midnight.
Tell your husband to develop a sense of humor.
A second message arrived.
Your defensiveness is making you look guilty.
I blocked her.
So she found other ways.
She started posting vague jokes online.
She created a private family group chat devoted to my supposed affair.
My cousin Josie eventually forwarded screenshots.
Marlo wrote:
Did anyone else notice how weird she was acting during pregnancy?
Another relative answered:
She was home all the time, though.
Marlo replied:
That’s what she SAID.
I had spent my final trimester on strict bed rest.
I barely went downstairs.
It didn’t matter.
Soon someone claimed they remembered me talking frequently about a male coworker.
Another person remembered seeing me laughing with someone in a parking lot.
No one could provide names.
Dates.
Photos.
Because none of it had happened.
But gradually, my imaginary affair developed its own mythology.
By Halloween, Marlo mailed Ren a costume.
A tiny landscaping outfit.
Green cap.
Toy rake.
Work gloves.
The card read:
“Every kid should get to dress up as someone in the family.”
I threw it into the garbage before Elias got home.
My hands shook so badly I missed the trash can the first time.
That was the moment I finally admitted something to myself.
I hated my sister.
Not disliked.
Not resented.
Hated.
And still, I tried to keep peace.
Because our father had died two years earlier.
Because Mom had already endured enough.
Because every family gathering seemed fragile since his death.
Because I had learned, like everyone else in our family, that keeping peace usually meant allowing Marlo to win.
Then came Ren’s first birthday.
We invited only close relatives.
Mom.
A few cousins.
Loretta.
Beckett.
Josie.
Marlo was specifically told not to come.
She arrived thirty minutes after the party started.
She walked through my front door carrying a gift bag as if she hadn’t spent a year poisoning my marriage.
I stepped toward her.
“You need to leave.”
“Oh, stop.”
“You weren’t invited.”
“It’s my niece’s birthday.”
Before I could take the gift away, Ren grabbed the tissue paper from her high chair.