I picked up Andrew’s phone and looked at the photos.
There was a bright upstairs bedroom.
A shared kitchen.
A small backyard.
Nothing luxurious.
Nothing terrible.
Just a normal room.
I held the phone toward Kayla.
“We’re going to look at it.”
“I’m not moving there.”
“Then don’t. We’re still going to look.”
She frowned.
“You can’t make me.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But if you’re staying here while figuring out your next step, I need to see you actually taking one.”
Kayla stared at me.
Then she marched upstairs.
A door slammed.
Andrew took another sip of coffee.
“Think that went well.”
I looked at him.
“Not one word.”
“Understood.”
Twenty minutes later, Kayla came downstairs wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.
She had also found the ugliest old robe in our linen closet and thrown it over one arm.
She dropped it onto a chair.
“Happy?”
I looked at the robe.
“Thrilled.”
That afternoon, we went to see the room.
It belonged to a woman named Renee, who was around Kayla’s age and worked from home three days a week.
The house was small but clean.
Kayla inspected the bedroom twice.
The second time, she opened the closet and stood there longer than necessary.
Renee showed us the kitchen.
“I don’t care if you cook late,” she explained. “Just clean up afterward. Quiet after eleven during the week. We split paper products.”
Kayla nodded.
Then Renee asked her something simple.
“Anything you need from somebody you live with?”
Kayla looked surprised.
“Me?”
“Yeah. Anything that drives you crazy?”
Kayla thought for a moment.
“Don’t borrow my clothes without asking.”
“Okay.”
Renee started walking toward the laundry room.
But Kayla stayed where she was.
“That’s it?”
Renee looked back.
“What?”
“You don’t want to know why?”
“They’re your clothes,” Renee said with a shrug. “Seems reasonable.”
Then she continued walking.
Kayla didn’t.
She just stood there staring at the closet door.
I watched her carefully.
For the first time all week, someone had heard one of Kayla’s boundaries and simply said okay.
No debate.
No demand for an explanation.
No argument about whether the boundary made sense.
Just respect.
On the drive home, Kayla sat beside me with the room listing still open on her phone.
Andrew hadn’t come with us.
That had been my decision.
This conversation belonged to my sister and me.
We made it halfway home before I finally asked the question I had been avoiding.
“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 something I wasn’t expecting.
“Because Eric didn’t cheat on me.”
I glanced at her.
“What?”
“He didn’t cheat. 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 hated how simple it sounded.
“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 stared through the side window.
“Six years, Amanda. And that was it.”
I kept driving.
I didn’t give her advice.
I didn’t defend Eric.
I didn’t try to make what happened sound better.
After a while, Kayla spoke again.
“I kept waiting to find out what he’d done.”
“And he hadn’t done anything?”
“No.”
Her voice dropped.
“I just wanted there to be a reason.”
And suddenly, I understood.
I understood why she had been watching Andrew so closely.
It wasn’t because she wanted my husband.
She wanted him to become evidence.
“You wanted to know my relationship wasn’t different,” I said quietly. “If Andrew failed your test, then what Eric did would make sense.”
