Chapter 5 - My Sister Wanted Everything I HadThe email changed everything.
Until then, I had thought about Lauren's betrayal as something painfully personal.
She had wanted my husband.
She had envied my marriage.
She had crossed a line no sister should cross.
But seeing my photograph in her business proposal forced me to confront something else.
Lauren hadn't just wanted Ryan.
She had wanted access to the life I'd built.
And somewhere along the way, she'd decided my achievements were resources she could use without asking.
I forwarded the email to Priya.
Then I called the sender.
A woman answered.
“Willow & Pine Interiors. This is Rebecca.”
I recognized the name.
Rebecca Mills had worked as Lauren's office manager for nearly four years.
I'd met her at holiday parties and occasionally helped troubleshoot problems with the company's website.
“Rebecca, it's Emma.”
There was a pause.
“Oh. Hi, Emma.”
Her voice had changed.
“Did you send me an expansion proposal?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Lauren asked me to.”
“Today?”
“Last week. She wanted me to send it when the accounting packet was finished.”
My heart began beating faster.
“Rebecca, do you know whether my name is listed as an investor?”
Silence.
Then she said quietly, “Emma, I thought you knew.”
I closed my eyes.
“Knew what?”
“That you were helping fund the expansion.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
The single word contained more genuine alarm than anything my mother had said at the birthday party.
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“I don't want to get involved in anything personal.”
“I understand.”
“But I think you should know something.”
I waited.
“Lauren has been telling vendors for months that her sister was backing the company.”
I gripped the phone.
“Which vendors?”
“Furniture suppliers. A showroom landlord. A contractor who was going to handle renovations.”
I stared at my laptop.
“Did anyone rely on that information to approve credit?”
“I don't know.”
She sounded frightened.
“I really don't.”
I took a breath.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Before I hung up, she said, “Emma?”
“Yes?”
“For what it's worth, I'm sorry.”
My eyes filled.
“Thank you.”
After the call, I sent Priya a detailed account of what Rebecca had said.
Priya advised me to preserve the email, avoid making public accusations, and let her request the relevant records through appropriate channels.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the photograph.
I opened the proposal again.
There I was, smiling beside my sister.
The image had been cropped from the Christmas picture in our parents' living room.
Ryan was no longer visible.
Someone had removed him.
I studied the edge of the photograph.
Where Ryan's shoulder should have been, there was a section of blurred Christmas greenery.
It was almost ridiculous.
Lauren had erased the man she'd been sleeping with from a photograph she wanted to use to convince strangers that I was her business partner.
I wondered whether she'd noticed the irony.
I wondered whether she cared.
That afternoon, I received a call from an unfamiliar number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
“Hello?”
“Emma.”
Lauren.
I closed my eyes.
“How did you get this number?”
“I'm calling from the office.”
“I blocked your personal number for a reason.”
“I know. But we need to talk.”
“No.”
“Emma, please. This is important.”
I looked at the proposal on my desk.
“Is it about the expansion plan with my photograph in it?”
She went silent.
I felt my pulse quicken.
“Lauren?”
“You weren't supposed to see that yet.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“Yet?”
“It wasn't finished.”
“You put my name on an investment agreement. You used my picture to persuade vendors I supported your business. And you're upset because the proposal wasn't finished?”
“That isn't fair.”
I looked toward the window.
“Fair?”
“Ryan told me you both agreed to invest.”
“He forged my signature.”
“He said he'd discussed it with you.”
“And after you learned he hadn't?”
She didn't answer.
I continued.
“You admitted at Dad's birthday that you suspected the signature wasn't legitimate.”
“Emma, you don't understand what it's like to run a business.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was again.
The suggestion that my life was too easy for me to understand hers.
“I manage multimillion-dollar housing projects, Lauren.”
“That's different. You have an employer. You get a paycheck whether a client signs or not.”
I took a slow breath.
“You're right. It's different. I don't get to invent investors whenever a project has a funding problem.”
She made an impatient sound.
“Why do you always have to act so superior?”
I stared at the phone.
“I'm asking why you used my name without permission.”
“And I'm telling you Ryan said he would handle it!”
There was a long silence.
Then I asked the question I'd been avoiding.
“Did you love him?”
Lauren's breathing changed.
“Emma…”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
“How long?”
She hesitated.
“Almost a year.”
The words settled between us.
Almost a year.
Not a kiss at Christmas.
Not a mistake that happened once.
Nearly a year of deliberate choices.
“When did it start?”
“Last September.”
I closed my eyes.
September.
That was the month Ryan and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary.
We'd spent a weekend in Cape May.
I had arranged dinner at a restaurant overlooking the ocean.
Ryan had given me a necklace shaped like a small gold star.
He'd held my hand beneath the table and told me he couldn't wait to see what the next five years brought.
Had he already been sleeping with my sister?
The thought nearly knocked me off my chair.
“Before our anniversary?” I whispered.
Lauren didn't answer.
“Lauren.”
“Yes.”
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Something inside me seemed to break all over again.
Then I asked, “Where?”
“What?”
“Where did it start?”
“At my apartment.”
I stared at the wall.
“Why was he there?”
“He came to look at the office lease I'd been considering. We had drinks afterward.”
I waited.
“He told me things had been difficult between you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Difficult?”
“He said you were always working.”
I thought of all the evenings Ryan had spent watching television while I finished reports.
I thought of the weekends he went golfing with his friends.
I thought of the countless times I'd asked whether he wanted us to plan something together.
He'd often told me he was tired.
“He told you we were having problems,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“And you believed him.”
Lauren sounded defensive.
“He was lonely.”
I shook my head.
“So was I, Lauren. I missed my husband too. I just didn't solve that by sleeping with yours.”
She had no answer.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered, “You don't understand what it's been like for me.”
I felt something harden.
“Then explain.”
She took a shaky breath.
“Do you know what it's like to come home every night to an empty apartment? To watch your younger sister get married, buy a house, get promoted, and have everyone tell you how wonderful her life is?”
I closed my eyes.
“You were at my wedding.”
“Yes.”
“You helped me choose my dress.”
“I know.”
“You held my flowers when I was nervous.”
Her voice broke.
“I know.”
I opened my eyes.
“And you knew what it would mean to me if you betrayed me.”
She began crying.
“I didn't mean for it to happen.”
“Maybe not the first kiss,” I said. “But every day afterward was a decision.”
For the first time, she had nothing to say.
I continued.
“You could have walked away. You could have told me. You could have told Ryan that whatever problems he had in his marriage needed to be resolved with his wife.”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“After Christmas.”
I stared at the phone.
“What happened after Christmas?”
Lauren was quiet.
Then she said, “Mom made me promise to end it.”
I felt a new wave of anger.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Ryan told me he loved me.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“He told me the same thing every day.”
Lauren began sobbing.
For a moment, the old instinct returned.
The instinct to soothe my sister.
To tell her everything would be okay.
To fix whatever had gone wrong.
But I stopped myself.
Her tears were not an emergency I had to solve.
I asked one final question.
“Did you want me to catch you at Dad's birthday?”
She went silent.
I waited.
Then she whispered, “I wanted him to stop lying.”
“To me?”
“To both of us.”
I shook my head.
“You knew he was married.”
“He kept promising things would change.”
“So you decided to make sure they did.”
She cried harder.
“I thought once you knew, we could all stop pretending.”
I sat perfectly still.
That was the moment I understood the kiss.
Lauren hadn't been careless.
She'd been tired of waiting for Ryan to choose her openly.
She wanted the secret exposed.
She wanted the marriage broken.
She wanted me out of the way.
And she had chosen the kitchen at Dad's birthday party because the entire family would be there when the consequences arrived.
“You knew I'd come for ice,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Dad asked me to get ice. You knew he always sends someone into the kitchen.”
She hesitated.
“I wasn't planning the exact moment.”
“But you didn't stop when you saw me.”
“No.”
“You smiled.”
A long silence.
Then Lauren whispered, “I thought maybe I'd finally get my life.”
I closed my eyes.
She had mistaken the destruction of mine for the beginning of hers.
“Lauren,” I said quietly, “you didn't steal a prize from me.”
“What?”
“Ryan wasn't a prize. He was my husband. A person who made promises and broke them. And you were my sister. You had a choice too.”
She said nothing.
“You didn't get my life. You destroyed our relationship.”
Then I hung up.
I sat alone for a long time.
Outside, sunlight fell across the office buildings.
People walked along the sidewalk holding coffee cups and talking on phones.
Cars stopped at traffic lights.
Life continued.
I wanted to scream that the world should stop for a moment.
That there should be some visible sign when a person's entire past had been rewritten.
But nothing changed.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Dad.
Can you meet me for dinner tonight? Just us.
I replied immediately.
Of course.
We met at a small diner halfway between Melissa's house and my parents' neighborhood.
Dad was already seated in a booth.
He'd ordered two coffees.
When I sat down, he slid one toward me.
“Decaf,” he said. “You look like you haven't slept in a week.”
I smiled.
“Feels like longer.”
He studied my face.
Then he asked, “How are you really?”
I stared at the coffee.
“Angry.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
I looked up.
“Good?”
“Anger tells you something matters. Just don't let it make your decisions for you.”
I smiled faintly.
“That sounds like something a principal would say.”
“Forty years of telling teenagers not to punch one another. Old habits.”
I laughed.
He reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
For a moment, we simply sat together.
Then Dad took a breath.
“Your mother called me this morning.”
My smile faded.
“What did she want?”
“She wants to come home.”
I looked at him.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I'm not ready.”
I nodded slowly.
He continued.
“She says Lauren has been calling her nonstop.”
I stared at my coffee.
“Of course she has.”
“Apparently the business is in serious trouble.”
“Ryan told me.”
Dad looked tired.
“Your mother wants me to help.”
My head snapped up.
“Again?”
He nodded.
“She says if we don't, Lauren might lose the company.”
I stared at him.
“What did you say?”
He looked directly at me.
“I told her I wasn't going to give Lauren another dollar until we knew where the previous money went.”
Something warm and painful moved through my chest.
Dad continued.
“And I told Margaret she needed to stop asking me to rescue Lauren from decisions Lauren refuses to take responsibility for.”
I swallowed.
“How did Mom react?”
“She cried.”
I almost laughed.
Dad gave a tired smile.
“Yes. I know.”
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and placed another envelope on the table.
“What is this?” I asked.
“A letter from your mother.”
I stiffened.
“I don't want it.”
“You don't have to read it.”
He hesitated.
“But there's something important inside.”
I looked at the envelope.
Dad continued.
“Margaret enclosed a copy of a message Lauren sent her last November.”
My stomach tightened.
“What message?”
Dad opened the envelope and unfolded a printed page.
It was a screenshot of a conversation.
Lauren had written:
Mom, Ryan says he needs more time. He won't leave Emma until they sort out their finances. I can't keep waiting forever.
Below it, my mother had replied:
Please be patient. Don't force him to make a decision that will destroy both girls.
I stared at the screen.
Not end it.
Not tell Emma.
Not this is wrong.
Be patient.
I looked up at Dad.
His expression was devastated.
“Emma,” he said quietly, “I think your mother wasn't just hiding what she knew.”
I couldn't speak.
He continued.
“I think she was trying to manage how and when Ryan left you.”
The diner seemed suddenly too loud.
Somewhere behind us, dishes clattered.
A waitress laughed.
A child asked for more ketchup.
I stared at those two messages.
My mother had been involved in conversations about the end of my marriage long before I knew my marriage was in danger.
She had known Lauren was waiting for Ryan to leave me.
And instead of warning me, she'd advised patience.
I looked at Dad.
“Why?”
His eyes filled with tears.
“I don't know, sweetheart.”
May you like
He took my hand.
“But I think it's time she told us.”
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