He snatched the microphone from the DJ’s hands.
—I’m pregnant with Eric’s child— Natalie said.
Then he smiled.
Me.
My mother’s glass of wine slipped from her hands and shattered on the marble floor. My father clutched the table as if the whole world had collapsed beneath his feet.
I didn’t move.
I didn’t shout.
I didn’t cry.
Because at the back of the room, sitting at a table, was a man in a gray suit whom Natalie did not know.
And I had spent four months waiting for this precise moment.
He was thirty-eight years old.
He was a retired military man, and some habits never leave you.
The most important thing is this: never go into battle until you have all your ammunition ready.
I organized the party myself.
I chose the ballroom, the live band, the three-tiered cake.
I even had our initials embroidered on the towels.
Ten years with Eric.
Ten years.
That morning, I ironed his blue shirt myself, the one he always said was his favorite.
Natalie was my younger sister.
The baby I carried all around the house.
My sister, whose debts I paid off before our parents found out.
She arrived wearing a red dress, hugged me tightly, and whispered in my ear:
“I love you very much, little sister.”
It smelled exactly like Eric’s cologne.
At first, I didn’t pay much attention to it.
But two months earlier, Eric had come home with exactly the same smell, and when I asked him, he told me it was because of the new air freshener in his car.
I believed him.
Of course.
I didn’t hire the private investigator because of Natalie.
I hired him because of Eric.
The first emergency meetings took place on Saturday.
Then came the “business trip” to Asheville. On Valentine’s Day, he went out to buy me flowers and returned three hours later empty-handed.
I did not confront him.
I called Grant Miller, a private investigator.
“I want to know who he is,” I told him.
“That’s all.”
Two weeks later, he called me.
He asked me if I was sitting down.
I told him that I already was.
“Madam,” he said, “this woman is part of your family.”
I thought of a cousin.
A sister-in-law.
Someone further away.
Never, not for a single second, did I imagine that she was my own sister.
Until I opened the first photo.
Eric and Natalie leave a hotel in Brooklyn.
She was wearing the blouse he had bought her for her birthday.
That night, I realized that I had spent years sleeping next to a stranger and sharing Christmas dinners with another.
