The Anniversary Toast Chapter 05
Nora was waiting by the valet stand, my overnight bag already in her trunk. She’d thought of everything.
“How do you feel?” she asked as I slid into the passenger seat.
I stared through the windshield at the restaurant’s glowing facade. Inside, I could hear raised voices – muffled, indistinct, but unmistakably chaotic.
“Empty,” I said. “But free.”
She started the car. “Good. Empty is temporary. Free is forever.”
We drove to Nora’s apartment in silence. She’d prepared the guest room – fresh sheets, a bottle of water on the nightstand, a box of tissues she’d optimistically placed nearby. But I didn’t cry. I’d used up my tears that morning in the bathroom. Four minutes. That was all Grant and Audrey were worth.
My phone was exploding. I turned it face-down on the nightstand without reading a single notification.
At midnight, Nora knocked softly on my door.
“Your mom called me,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “She wanted me to tell you she loves you. And that your dad had to be physically restrained from going after Grant.”
A ghost of a smile crossed my face. “That sounds like Dad.”
“She also said – and I’m quoting directly – Audrey is no longer welcome in my house.”
I closed my eyes. The finality of that sentence hit harder than I expected. Not because I wanted my mother to forgive Audrey, but because it made everything real. This wasn’t a nightmare I’d wake up from. My family was fractured, and the person who fractured it shared my blood.
“Did Audrey call her?”
Nora hesitated. “Seventeen times. Your mom didn’t pick up once.”
I nodded slowly. “Good.”
That night, I lay in the dark and let myself feel it – all of it. The rage, the grief, the humiliation, the strange, hollow relief of no longer living inside a lie. I thought about the five years I’d spent building a life with Grant. The house we’d renovated together. The garden I’d planted. The future I’d imagined – children, holidays, growing old – all of it constructed on a foundation that had been rotting from the inside for eighteen months.
And Audrey. My baby sister, who I’d taught to ride a bike, who I’d held during thunderstorms, who I’d loved unconditionally since the day she was born.
She’d looked me in the eyes at every family gathering and performed the role of devoted sister while sneaking into my husband’s arms the moment I turned away.
That was the part I couldn’t reconcile. Grant was a liar, but he was a man I’d chosen. Audrey was blood. You don’t choose blood. You trust it because it’s supposed to be the one thing that doesn’t betray you.
I pressed my face into the pillow and screamed – silently, with everything I had – and then I was done.
In the morning, I would begin again.