THIRTY-EIGHT
You’ve been living with my—
You’ve been living with my—
You’ve been living with my—
Husband.
The air leaves my lungs in a painful, sharp exhale, and my heart gives a brutal thump. My knees knock together, and I grip the banister to remain upright even though all I want to do is collapse. The room goes fuzzy around the edges as I focus in on my sister’s admission.
“What?” I breathe.
It’s a lie. It has to be another one of her lies, because there’s no way, nopossibleway, that Landon Blair and Melanie James are married. Where’s the ring? Where are the wedding photos? Where’s the evidence?
I would know if they were married.
Everyonewould know.
But Mel says, “Landon and I aremarried, Violet,” and it’s soconvincing.
I shake my head anyway. Or, at least, I think I do. I’m not sure. My face feels numb. So do my hands. I think I might be having an anxiety attack. “I don’t believe you.”
“You really think I would lie about something like that?”
“You lied about everything else, Mel,” I say, and I can hear the raw panic in my voice. “You lied about Mom. You lied about Dad. You lied about me. Why wouldn’t you lie about Landon, too?”
“We eloped when I was twenty-three and told no one,” she snaps. “Landon’s family would disown him if they knew, so we kept it a secret.”
My mind reels, searching, filtering, hunting for any sort of sign. Any sort of clue. Anything, anything, anything at all.
Mel’s words from their fight in the kitchen ring through my head.
You can’t force me out. Not without letting your entire family know that you were young and stupid and did the one thing they would never approve of.
Marrying the woman they hate.
“But you said you guys were over,” I say shakily. “You moved out.”
She almost laughs. “Landon and I have separated a million times, Violet. But he always comes back to me. Why do you think I’m here?”
Whyisshe here?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything, apparently.
She says something else, but my ears are ringing and my head’s spinning and my stomach’s churning with this horrific revelation. The earth drops out from under me, and I stumble back as a sprawling chasm forms between us, leaving Mel on one side and me on the other. There’s never been so much distance between us, and I realize that we’ll never close this gap. It’s uncrossable and unmendable, and my sister might as well be gone.
I’ve ruined everything.
Mel leaves me in the hallway, surrounded by the shattered remnants of the bomb she just dropped. My fingers start to tingle. I can barely feel my body as I sink down to the floor, drenched in guilt, drowning in shame. I struggle to keep my head above it all, but my heart’s turned to stone, and it’s pulling me down.
They’re married.
Landon Blair and Melanie James aremarried.
We’ll always be talking, Violet. That’s the problem.
Because they’re married.
