Chapter 13

I don’t know what kind of sick game Thea is playing, wanting me to tear into her with the rage of her betrayal, but I refuse to play into her childish demands.

Despite how much Thea wants me to hate her, I see her only as a foolish child, young and ignorant. Too inexperienced to really know what she’s doing.

“I’m not wasting my time and energy on someone so naïve and immature,” I say. “Garnar is the one I need to speak with. He’s your puppeteer, Thea. You’ll wake up someday on your own and realize how much he’s playing us both.”

“Don’t turn this around on me and Garnar,” Thea sneers. She lifts her chin so that she can look down her nose at me. “You should feel anger. You should feel hate.”

“Why?” I don’t understand her at all. “Why do you want me to hate you so much?”

With clenched teeth, she spit out the words, “Because I hate you.”

Everything freezes. My thoughts. My body. The entire world seems to slow.

Thea hates me? How can that be? “After everything I’ve done for you…”

“You stole my life!” Thea snaps, voice suddenly rising.

“I searched for you, endlessly, tirelessly,” I say. “Everyone else wanted to give up, but I never did.”

When I was adopted into the Owens family, Thea had already been missing. Our parents mourned constantly, every single day. They cared for me, but it was as if a piece of them was always missing.

I love them, and it pained me to see them like that. So I threw myself into the search to find the sister I never knew. I organized search rallies and hung up signs. I volunteered wherever I could. Anything to get the word out to try and bring my sister home.

There were times when even my parents asked me to stop. Their hearts were so sore from the endless searching, the endless disappointments.

But I never quit, even when I had to go behind their backs to keep from hurting them further.

When Thea was finally found, I was the one who helped her adjust back into her old life. I thought, even if our age difference was too big to make us true friends, that we would always be sisters.

Even this dalliance with my husband, while painful, would never break those bonds of family between us.

How could she ever think I would hate her? She is one of the handful of people on this earth that I so dearly love.

“I never wanted your life, Thea. Our parents missed you so much, I worked so hard to bring you back and repair our family.”

“Bullshit,” Thea says. Her eyes are ice cold, searing me from the inside out. “You only wanted people to like you. Perfect Esther missing the sister she never met.” Thea spits at me. “You used them – used me – to bring yourself up and make yourself important.”

“That is not true,” I say fiercely. “I swear, I only ever wanted to help.”

“You swear?”

“Yes.”

“Then cross your heart,” Thea demands.

I lift my hand to my chest and draw an X shape over my heart.

“Now cross mine,” she says. Her fury has not dimmed.

I’ll do anything to help quell her anger, so I reach toward her chest.

Immediately, she screams and falls.

I haven’t even touched her!

Garnar rushes out from the bedroom. With my hand still outstretched, to him, it must look like I pushed her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Garnar roars. He storms toward me and shoves me harshly to the side. I hit the wall – hard. My elbow leaves a dent the plaster.

Garnar ignores me totally in favor of tending to Thea. She whimpers as he helps her to her feet.

“She attacked me out of nowhere,” Thea says with a sob.

“That’s not true!”

“Shut up, Esther!” Garnar yells.

I startle at his vicious tone, rendered speechless. How can he talk to me like that? Even if he doesn’t love me anymore, to think I would be commit so heinous an act as to lay hands on my sister? Does he know me at all?

“You are not the woman I married,” Garnar snaps. He pulls Thea into the shelter of his arms. She curls into him weakly and starts crying on his shoulder. Crocodile tears, I’m sure. “You’ve changed into a venomous snake, attacking your sister simply because she is more desirable than you.”

“I have never in my life laid a hand on anyone, and I’d never hurt my sister.”

“You are a liar!” Thea shouts in a sudden outburst. Quickly, she buries her face back in Garnar’s shoulder.

Disappointment swells in me more than anger. My husband and my sister, so consumed by their lust for one another that they are delirious to everything else.

I have children with Garnar! How could he think so little of me?

“You have been cheating behind my back,” I say, keeping each word measured, my own anger in check. “I haven’t said a word. I never exposed you, and believe me, I’ve had my chances now. Yet still, you accuse me of this? Haven’t I done enough? Suffered enough? What more could you possibly want from me?”

Thea sniffles and sobs as she shakes her head back and forth. Garnar holds her protectively, gently patting her back.

“You disgust me, Esther,” Garnar says. “The woman I used to know would have never stooped this low. Jealousy is one thing, but to act on it. To come in here and attack Thea while she is so defenseless…”

It’s suddenly very clear to me that nothing I do or say is going to change Garnar’s mind about this. Only a direct confession from Thea is likely to sway him, but I know better than to expect that now, after she said she hates me.

I don’t know if she means it, or if it’s just the pent up frustration from her earlier humiliation and the fact that the man she’s dating already has a wife.

If anyone is jealous of anyone, it’s likely her of me. She might be sleeping with my husband, but I’m the one with the ring.

Disgust sourly churns my stomach. I don’t want this. Any of this.

“You already embarrassed Thea earlier at the party,” Garnar continues. “But that wasn’t enough for you. You had to follow us here and bully Thea further.”

“I didn’t follow anyone. This is my home.”

“It’s my home, and home to those I see fit to let live here,” Garnar says. “Today you have given me no reason to continue allowing you to stay here. Thea will sleep in the bedroom from now on. You can make a bed in your car in the garage.”

My fingertips go numb first, then my toes.

“If you have any decency left, you will thank me for this generosity,” Garnar says. “It’s only for the sake of the children I don’t kick you out onto the street.”

“She deserves to be on the street,” Thea cries.

Garnar gently kisses her cheek. “Let me handle this, honey.”

The numbness spreads up my arms and legs, quickly overtaking nearly every part of me, except my heart, and my mouth.

“Garnar,” I say.

“It’s no use trying to defend yourself,” he says.

That’s not what I’m doing. Not anymore.

I tell him, “I want a divorce.”