On the morning my former husband, Ryan, married my younger sister, Lina, I fastened the buttons on my nine-year-old daughter’s dress while she asked questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
“Will Aunt Lina still be my aunt if she becomes my bonus mom?”
I paused.
Amelia looked at me through the mirror.
“And will you still be her sister?”
That question hurt more than the first.
“I don’t know,” I finally whispered.
Thirteen years with Ryan had given us four children and a life I thought would last. I was pregnant with our fifth when everything fell apart.
I came home early one afternoon and heard Ryan laughing on the phone.
He was telling someone he loved her. He promised they would meet at their usual hotel. Then he joked that I believed every excuse he gave me.
A jar slipped from my grocery bag and shattered on the floor.
Ryan turned around.
For once, he didn’t have another lie ready.
The woman on the other end of the phone was Lina.
My younger sister.
Their affair had already lasted almost a year.
I Filed for Divorce
There was no dramatic reconciliation.
No explanation could make what they had done disappear.
I filed for divorce.
What made it harder was the reaction from my own family.
My parents told me that Lina deserved to be happy too. They encouraged me to accept their relationship and move forward.
But I was still trying to understand how the two people closest to me had betrayed me.
Then I lost the baby.
Ryan cried when I told him.
For a moment, I thought maybe he understood what we had lost.
Three weeks later, he and Lina announced their engagement.
They invited me and the children to the wedding.
I said no.
Amelia, however, wanted to see her father get married.
She was nine. She couldn’t understand why loving her father meant being caught in the middle of something she hadn’t caused.
So I let her go with my mother.
I thought that would be enough distance.
I was wrong.
“Mom, I Need You”
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