Chapter 4 #2
"No. Don't you dare say my name as if you still have a right to it."
Lara straightened. The softness fell off her so fast it actually made things easier. At last I was seeing not silk but blade.
"Fine," she said. "Let's skip the theatrics. You wanted the truth? The truth is, it's been empty between you two for a long time."
I swayed but held.
"That's not for you to decide."
"And who was deciding? You? Did you ever decide anything, Niki?
For eight years you lived as if Damien weren't a husband but a temple.
You mopped the floors at the altar, bore him heirs, waited for grace, caught every 'beautiful' like a handout.
You made yourself a shadow all on your own, and now you're screaming at me because he looked where there was a woman. "
The slap came on its own.
Sharp. Clean. My palm flared with pain, and on Lara's cheek a red mark bloomed immediately. She turned her face back slowly. In her eyes there was no longer a sister or pity.
"One more time," she whispered, "and I'll forget we're related."
"You already forgot."
"He came to me on his own."
Those words cut into me worse than the kiss on the recording.
"Shut up."
"No—you'll hear the rest. You wanted the raw meat, Niki?
Here it is. He came on his own. I didn't drag him.
I didn't cry on his shoulder about a wife who's no longer a woman but a permanent ache in a bathrobe.
He came to me and was silent in a way that made everything clear without words.
Because next to me he didn't have to pretend he was guilty for every extra pound you carried. "
"SHUT UP!"
"Does it hurt? Truth is an unpleasant thing when it's not in your favor."
"You slept with my husband!"
"And you lost him before I ever touched him."
I hit her again. Not as cleanly this time.
Almost with a full swing, with rage, with pain that sent black circles spinning before my eyes.
Lara staggered, bumped the coffee table, and the bag of croissants fell to the floor.
The sweet smell of vanilla filled the living room, and it nearly made me retch.
Sister, croissants, affair. What a cozy, domestic horror.
"Get out of my house," I said.
"Your house?" Lara smirked, holding her cheek. "Careful with the phrasing. You know perfectly well that all you've got here are kids' drawings on the fridge."
"Get out."
"He won't let you throw me out."
"We'll see."
"We'll see," she said and suddenly smiled. "Just keep in mind: if you start a war right now, you'll be the first to lose. He can't stand being forced to choose."
"He already chose."
"No. Damien doesn't choose between women. He chooses who'll be more convenient alongside his life. And you know what's the funniest part? You could have won—if you didn't look so pathetic."
I grabbed her coat and threw it at her chest.
"GET OUT!"
She caught the coat but didn't leave right away. She looked at me from above, though we were nearly the same height. Lara had always known how to look as if everyone around her were shorter.
"You think he'll get on his knees for you?"
"I don't need his knees."
"You do. You just don't know it yet because you're still angry. By evening you'll start waiting. By night you'll be listening for his car at the gate. By morning you'll have figured out how to forgive. That's who you are, Niki. You don't leave. You endure."
"Not anymore."
"We'll see."
She walked toward the door. I followed, because I was afraid that if I stopped, I'd fall. In the foyer, Lara turned, her hand already on the handle.
"And one more thing. Don't even think about using the children as a shield. Tim and Marta love their father."
I froze.
"Don't say their names."
"Why? I'm their aunt."
"You're nothing."
"That's what you're saying right now. But Marta fell asleep in my arms last night, remember? Tim gave me a drawing. The children aren't to blame that adults sometimes—"
"GET OUT!!!"
I screamed so loudly that somewhere upstairs a door slammed from the draft. Lara flinched but wasn't afraid. She opened the door, stepped onto the porch, then turned one last time.
"You can hate me as much as you want. But it won't change the main thing: he kissed me not because I'm your sister and he wanted to deliberately hurt you. But because he wanted to."
The door slammed shut. I stood in the foyer and couldn't move.
Inside me, nothing soft remained. No love for my sister.
No faith in my husband. No trace of the old Niki, who knew how to apologize even for her own wounds.
I walked to the living room, picked up the bag of croissants from the floor, and threw it in the trash.
Then I spotted a small golden gleam on the carpet.
The bracelet.
The one with the garnet stone.
Lara had lost it when I hit her the second time, or dropped it on purpose—it no longer mattered. I picked the piece of jewelry up with two fingers, the way you pick up not an object but evidence of a murder, and was suddenly overtaken by such quiet, icy calm that even the tears retreated.
I went up to Damien's study, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, and placed the bracelet there, where he usually kept documents he trusted to no one.
Let him find it himself.
Let him take it in his hand.
Let him understand—not from Lara's tears and not from my screaming, but from this small golden chain—that his two women had finally met without him.
I closed the drawer, left the study, and stopped at the staircase. The house was quiet. Too quiet for a place where a sister had just died.