My Sister Kept Walking Around My Husband in Just a Towel and Called It a ‘Test’ – Then One Day, He Did Something That Made Her Turn Bright Red

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.

"Why did you need Andrew to fail?"

Kayla kept looking through the windshield.

"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."

I glanced at her.

"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?"

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."

I drove.

No advice.

No defense of Eric.

No attempt to make the sentence less ugly.

Then Kayla said, "I kept waiting to find out what he'd done."

"And he hadn't?"

"No." Her voice dropped. "I just wanted there to be a reason."

I finally understood why she'd been watching Andrew so closely.

Not because she wanted him.

Because she wanted him to become evidence.

"You wanted to know mine wasn't different," I muttered. "If Andrew failed your test, then Eric made sense."

Kayla looked at me. Then she turned back toward the window.

"And if Andrew didn't?"

She picked at a loose corner of the phone case.

When she answered, her voice was almost too quiet to hear.

"Then maybe it wasn't relationships."

I waited.

I pulled into our driveway and shut off the engine.

Neither of us reached for the doors.