The second time, she opened the closet and stood there longer than necessary.
Renee showed us the kitchen.
Kayla inspected the bedroom twice.
“I don’t care if you cook late,” she said. “Just clean up afterward. Quiet after 11 during the week. We split paper products.”
Kayla nodded.
“Anything you need from somebody you live with?” Renee asked.
Kayla looked caught off guard.
“Me?”
“Yeah. Anything that drives you crazy?”
Kayla looked caught off guard.
Kayla thought.
“Don’t borrow my clothes without asking.”
“Okay.”
Renee moved on toward the laundry room.
Kayla stayed where she was.
“That’s it?”
Renee looked back.
“What?”
“Don’t borrow my clothes without asking.”
“You don’t want to know why?”
“They’re your clothes.”
She shrugged. “Seems reasonable.”
Then she kept walking.
Kayla didn’t.
I watched my sister stare at the closet door.
“You don’t want to know why?”
For the first time all week, somebody had heard one of Kayla’s boundaries and simply said okay.
***
On the drive home, Kayla sat beside me with the room listing still open on her phone.
Andrew hadn’t come.
That had been my decision.
This conversation belonged to us.
We made it halfway home before I asked the question I’d been avoiding.
That had been my decision.
“Why did you need Andrew to fail?”
Kayla kept looking through the windshield.
“I didn’t.”
“Then why wasn’t it enough when I asked you to stop?”
She locked her phone.
For several blocks, she said nothing.
Then she whispered, “Because Eric didn’t cheat on me.”
“Why did you need Andrew to fail?”
I glanced at her.
“What?”
“He didn’t cheat.” Her thumb rubbed the dark screen. “He didn’t hit me. He didn’t steal from me. There wasn’t another woman.”
I slowed at a red light.
“Then what happened?”
“He didn’t cheat.”
Kayla gave me the answer as though she still hated how little space it took up.
“He said he didn’t want our life anymore.”
The light changed.
I didn’t move until the driver behind me tapped his horn.
Kayla looked out the side window.
“Six years, Amanda. And that was it.”
“He said he didn’t want our life anymore.”
I drove.
No advice.
No defense of Eric.
