6. Delilah
DELILAH
“Dee? You still there?”
“Still here.”
“You went quiet on me,” Connor accuses.
I did. But that’s only because I’m dragging a cropped photo of my sister’s bare hip onto a black background and making sure it’s properly centered, which happens to be a silent activity.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “Got a lot of paperwork to get through before the party tonight.”
Not entirely untrue.
My phone is resting face-down on the desk, on speaker. I can talk to my husband just fine as long as I don’t have to look at his name while I do it.
The shop has been dark since noon. I told Priya to close at lunch and lock up on her way out.
“You’re sure?” she asked. “Because I can stay. Amari can do daycare pickup without me. He’d prefer it, honestly.”
I’d waved her off. “Go home, Pri.”
“Alright, if you say so.” She picked at her wind-chapped lip. “Oh, don’t forget that the Nelsons’ second tray—”
“Is done and boxed and in the front cooler with their name on it in marker. I know.”
She frowned and squinted at me. “Everything alright, honey buns? You’ve been weird lately.”
It took everything I had to shrug it off. “Just a Christmastime funk. It’ll pass.”
“Well, alrighty. But I’ve got a futon at my place if tonight goes badly.”
“It’s a party at my mother’s house,” I’d drawled. “It’s always bad.”
“Delilah Dorsey.” She jabbed a finger at me. “Swear right now you’ll text me in case of emergencies.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, go home. Merry Christmas, love.”
Finally, she’d left. I immediately extinguished all the lights, drew the blinds, and flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED.
Then I retreated to the office.
The front half of tonight’s petard-hoisting PowerPoint is ten years of Dorsey extended family chronicles. Christmases, birthdays, the summer at the lake, the year Dad wore the reindeer antlers to dinner and wouldn’t take them off.
Vivian is in the middle of almost every frame. She’s never once had to be told where to stand.
I’m in some of them, too, though usually as an elbow at the edge or a hand holding a platter. Mostly, I’m the person who took nine of the ten pictures and only made it into the tenth by accident.
That part went quickly.
But before I could get into the scandalous part of the slideshow in earnest, Connor called, so now, I’m stuck pretending all is well in the world.
“So what time do you want to head over?” he asks.
“I’m going straight there from here. I’ve got the food to bring at four.”
“Right. The three trips.” He laughs. “You want me to swing by and grab a load?”
I stop dragging photos for a second. That’s weirdly thoughtful of him.
“No,” I say. “I’ve got it.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
Ten years of marriage and he has never offered to help me haul a tray. Now, he’s got a whole courier service running.
There’s an ulterior motive here. Has to be.
He wants to know where I am and what I’m doing. That’s all this is.
“I’m sure,” I tell him. “You’d only rearrange my trunk and then I’d have to redo it.”
I click the photo into place. My sister’s naked waist, dead center, black background. Undeniable. I can even see that stupid heart tattoo just above her hip bone.
“Did your mother say what time dinner is?” he asks.
“Seven.”
“Gotcha. And then what, the whole thing after? Dessert, coffee, the slideshow?”
Ah. There it is.
He’s asking about the schedule. Because he wants to know when the gap opens up for another edition of Sneak Around Behind Delilah’s Back. When fifty people will be busy looking at graduation photos so he and Vivian can go find a coat closet to bone in.
I keep my voice bored. “Yeah. Dinner at seven. Slideshow after. Same as every year, minus one person.”
“Yeah. First one without him.” I can hear him wince. “You gonna be alright filling his shoes?”
Bitterness pours out of me. “Gee, I dunno. My dad’s dead, and it’s Christmas, and I’m currently slaving away at the shop by myself. So if that’s ‘alright,’ then yeah, I’m alright.”
The awkward pause that follows is too much—as is the risk of me saying something even more scathing—so I decide to wrap it up.
“I gotta go, Conn. I’ll see you at my mom’s.”
I don’t know or care what he’ll say to that. I just hang up and get back to work.
Little by little, it all starts to come together. It’s painful to relive these memories now because they’re all so tainted, but I bite down and white-knuckle my way through.
Here’s 2017, my mother’s fiftieth. Two dozen people in the photo, and there’s Viv, dead center with her chin up and her hand on her hip like the photographer flew in for her.
Here’s Easter. Viv is on the arm of Dad’s chair and I’m somewhere behind the ham.
Here’s my own wedding. My own actual wedding. And there’s my sister, front and center in the family picture, in a dress the same shade as mine.
I keep finding myself at the edges of the life I thought was mine. Half a shoulder. The back of my head. A glimpse of dirty blonde hair.
If you flipped through this deck fast enough, you’d think the Dorseys had a beloved family ghost who existed only from the wrist down.
Once the family stuff is in place, I start getting the Vivian-specific items queued up. Well, the even-more-Vivian-specific items.
One by one, I load all the images from the Dorsey Sisters shared album.
And I do mean all of them.
From Cannes to Tulum, from nightclub outfits to hippy-dippy sundresses, from manicured nails to puppy dogs in thousand-dollar outfits.
It’s excessive, which of course is the point. I can already feel the growing tension in the room as my family members will start to ask themselves, What’s the deal here? Yes, it’s Viv’s world and we’re all just living in it… but isn’t this a little much, even by her standards?
Yes. Yes, it is a little much, isn’t it? It’s way too fucking much.
It’s just Viv, Viv, Viv, all the goddamn time.
“Anything for you, sister dear,” I snarl at the screen.
She’s always wanted the spotlight.
Tonight, she gets it.
Then comes the turn.
We’ve gone from family fun, to The Vivian Special, to the first hint that something rotten is afoot.
I put up the receipts in order.
Hotel room service.
The burned scrap of loan document.
The screenshots of the album uploads disappearing, and then the pictures I took of the text message thread between Connor and Vivian.
Then I reach the coup de grace.
The videos.
I don’t want to watch them all again myself. Nor do I have any desire to subject my entire family to the full spectrum of Vivian’s increasingly pornographic moans or Connor’s caveman grunts.
So I cut together a short clip that gets my point across just fine.
It’s a shot of the unmistakable headboard, of his hand on her hip, and then their brief, smug conversation.
“This is so fucking reckless. We’re gonna get caught.”
“Relax. She never notices anything.”
Ten seconds that show what she did.
Plus ten seconds that show who she is.
I watch it once through to be certain it does what I need it to do. Then, satisfied, I lean back in my seat.
But I don’t feel like it’s done yet. Something’s missing, and I can’t figure out what it is.
Then, out of nowhere, it occurs to me.
What I’ve shown is a personal betrayal. Infidelity happens all the time, though, doesn’t it? Hell, half the adults at that party tonight are on their second or third marriages. It won’t have the bombshell effect I’m after.
I need to show that this is much more than that.
But how?
The only hard proof I have that anything beyond my feelings has been hurt is an ashed-over scrap of paper. No one is going to give a shit about it.
To me, it’s the end of the world.
To them, it’s meaningless. My mother will squint at it and say, “What am I looking at, Delilah?”
And Connor, who up until that image will probably be struck dumb, will suddenly have a thing to say. She’s been going through my garbage. She’s not well.
Hm. That’s a conundrum.
While I try to find a way to frame it that conveys the enormity of what my sister and my husband have done to me, I add one important piece: the soundtrack of Silent Night, Dad’s preferred rendition, layered underneath the whole thing.
Then I export.
The little bar creeps across the screen. It takes its sweet time doing so, however. I’m left to sit there aimlessly with my chin in my hand and ponder about how the best evidence I have of the worst crime in the stack is a silly little piece nobody will believe.
As the progress bar crawls, I go make myself useful by sorting the mail.
There’s a stack of it on the desk that’s been growing since the holiday rush ate my life: vendor statements, a snowman card from the flour supplier, a health-department renewal.
And more. Junk. A supplier catalog. Junk. Insurance. Junk. The water bill. Junk. A menu from the pizza place two blocks over. Junk.
I’m three-quarters down when my hands stop.
A white envelope with a business window. Nothing dramatic about it whatsoever.
Except for one teeny-tiny little word that catches my attention.
DELILAH A. DORSEY...
GUARANTOR
I rip it open and cut my thumb in the process, so that when I pull out the contents, I leave a smear of red across the top corner.
It’s four pages, stapled together.
The first page has letterhead across the top.
V HAVEN HOLDINGS, LLC
My breath goes solid in my throat.
“‘Year-end statement of obligation,’“ I read out, “‘for the account of Delilah Dorsey, guarantor.’“
Here’s what my own mail informs me about my own life.
The premises at 4412 Fourth Avenue, which are my building and my ovens and my name over the door, are pledged as collateral.
They are pledged against a balance of four million dollars, borrowed by Connor Boyd.
The guarantor signature is dated the eighth of October, this year.
The guarantor—at least as far as this lender believes—is me.
And on the 15th of January, V Haven Holdings, LLC, intends to enforce against the collateral.
Translated into plain English:
My husband took out a loan that he couldn’t repay.
So now, in three short weeks, the people whose money he stole are coming to claim all that’s left.
My bakery.
Merry Christmas to me.