Page 31 of Sweet Ruin

“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 grâce.

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.