Page 4 of Sweet Ruin

Feeling nauseous, I stumble over to the sink, turn the water on, and stand there with my hands under it. The water is cold, then hot. I watch the red icing come off my thumb and swirl around the drain. It looks like blood.

I keep thinking, That can’t be real.

That can’t be my sister sleeping with my husband in my bed.

It can’t be.

It can’t.

But it is.

I cut off the faucet and stand at the sink for a while. I couldn’t tell you how long. Long enough that the drips stop.

When I feel like I’m stable on my feet again, I go back over, drop to one aching knee, and fish out my phone from where it fell.

Because I guess I’m a masochist, I make myself open the second one, too. Four seconds is all I can take, and all I need. Same bed, different night. The moans and grunts are pretty much unchanged.

I tap the little i in the corner of the first video. The information comes up. It tells me the file name, how big it is, and when it was taken.

That little string of characters is basically another punch in the stomach.

August 8th. 10:42 P.M.

August 8th was a Saturday. I know that for a fact because, on August 8th, I did the Montoya wedding for three hundred people. I didn’t finish until eleven at night, by which point my feet were swollen up like loaves of Wonder Bread. I slept at the bakery on the cot in the office because I had a brunch order at five and I didn’t want to drive home twice.

Connor brought me a Gatorade at nine, kissed the top of my head, and said, Go easy on yourself, Dee.

Then he left. He went home.

To her.

I sit down on the floor.

Not on purpose. My knees just stop holding me, so I end up on the rubber mat with my back against the cart, phone in my hand, the screen still showing that little box of information.

File name. Size. Date.

The walk-in freezer motor chugs along. The fan over the cookies clicks every few seconds when the blade catches on the guard, which I’ve been meaning to fix since October, just as soon as I can find the spare funds.

It’s amidst that backdrop of noise that I finally admit something out loud that I’ve never let myself say before.

“If I have something she wants, she takes it.”

That’s the story of Delilah Dorsey. Thirty-one years of my life in nine words.

I’ve said other things. I’ve said, Viv’s just like that. Or She doesn’t mean anything by it. I’ve said, She’s the baby, she never learned.

I have a soft, padded room of excuses I put her in every time she does something.

But those are lies.

The truth is simple.

If I have something she wants, she takes it.

When I was fourteen, I saved up for a gorgeous Burberry coat that I wanted more than life itself. It took me four months of babysitting every single Friday and Saturday night before I had enough.

I wore it twice.