“What is this?”
Kayla's voice had lost its usual confidence.
Andrew stood on the opposite side of the counter.
“Three rooms.”
She stared at the screen.
“All nearby.”
“You've been looking for apartments for me?”
“Rooms,” he corrected. “Not apartments.”
Her thumb moved rapidly across the screen.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“A few days.”
She looked up sharply.
“You've been planning this behind my back?”
“No.”
“Then what is this?”
“A solution.”
She turned toward me.
“Amanda?”
I said nothing at first.
She looked between us.
“Are you seriously letting him do this?”
Andrew answered before I could.
“I'm not doing anything to you.”
“You're telling me to leave.”
“No.”
“Then what does this mean?”
“It means you've been staying here temporarily, and I've been looking for options for when you're ready to have your own place.”
She laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“You're throwing me out.”
“Amanda and I invited you to stay until you got back on your feet.”
“I'm not back on my feet.”
“I know.”
“I don't have a job.”
“I know.”
“I don't have money.”
“I know.”
Her voice cracked.
“And now you're giving me a deadline?”
I stepped forward.
“No one is throwing you out.”
She looked at me.
“Then why are there rooms on his phone?”
“Because temporary has to mean something.”
Her face hardened.
“Because I wore a towel?”
“No.”
I moved the toast away from the burner before it burned.
“Because I asked you not to do something in my home, and you decided you were entitled to an explanation before respecting my answer.”
She tightened the towel around herself.
“So this is punishment.”
“No.”
“If I wanted to punish you,” I said, “I'd make you keep eating Andrew's cereal.”
Andrew looked offended.
“That's unnecessary.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Kayla didn't.
“I am heartbroken.”
“I know.”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“I know.”
“And you're telling me to leave.”
“I'm telling you that we need a plan.”
She looked at Andrew.
“And you?”
He lifted his coffee.
“What about me?”
“You've been acting like I'm some kind of threat.”
“No.”
“You leave every time I walk into the kitchen.”
“The first time, I left because it was awkward.”
“And now?”
“Now I leave because I'm not participating.”
“Participating in what?”
He set down his mug.
“Your experiment.”
She stared at him.
“You think this is an experiment?”
“You called it one.”
“I was testing something.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned against the counter.
“You wanted me to react. You wanted to see whether I would respond to you.”
“I wasn't trying to seduce you.”
“I know.”
That surprised her.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Then what's your problem?”
“You kept trying to turn me into evidence.”
She frowned.
“Evidence of what?”
“Whatever conclusion you're trying to reach.”
She said nothing.
Andrew continued.
“You wanted me to fail so you could point at the failure and say, ‘See? This is what men are like.’ Or maybe you wanted me to pass so you could tell yourself something else. Either way, you were making me responsible for proving something to you.”
Her jaw tightened.
“You don't know anything about me.”
“No.”
He nodded.
“But I know what happened every morning.”
She looked away.
“You walked into the kitchen dressed in a way Amanda had specifically asked you not to dress. I left. You watched me leave. Then you did it again the next day.”
His voice remained calm.
“So I stopped giving you the reaction you were looking for.”
Kayla's eyes narrowed.
“You think you're clever.”
“No.”
He glanced at me.
“I think I should have handled this differently.”
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“I thought staying out of it meant leaving you to deal with your sister.”
He looked back at Kayla.
“But that wasn't staying out of it.”
Then he turned toward me.
“I left you standing here every morning enforcing a boundary that involved both of us.”
I didn't expect that.
Andrew continued.
“This is our home. Our kitchen. Our marriage.”
He paused.
“And I let you carry the uncomfortable part alone because I thought I was avoiding the problem.”
I felt the anger in my chest loosen.
“You should have told me you were looking at rooms.”
“I should have.”
Kayla threw her hands up.
“Fantastic.”
We both looked at her.
“Now you're having a marriage breakthrough.”
Andrew shrugged.
“Apparently.”
She shook her head.
“Can I please get dressed?”
“Please,” I said.
She turned toward the stairs.
“Kayla.”
She stopped.
“One of those rooms is available this afternoon.”
She looked back.
“You already made an appointment?”
“I found the listing,” Andrew said. “Amanda contacted the owner.”
“I’m not going.”
“You don't have to decide today.”
She stared at me.
“You're serious.”
“Yes.”
Her expression changed.
She seemed less angry now and more frightened.
“I can't move out right now.”
“I know.”
“I don't even know where I'm going to work.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because I don't want you staying here indefinitely while we pretend that's a plan.”
She swallowed.
“You're giving up on me.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“I'm trying to help you become independent again.”
She looked down.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then she walked upstairs.
The room went quiet.
Andrew exhaled.
“I hate this.”
“So do I.”
He looked at me.
“But I think you were right.”
“About what?”
“She needs a plan.”
I nodded.
That afternoon, Kayla and I went to see one of the rooms.
Andrew stayed home.
I thought that was important.
This needed to be a conversation between sisters, not a confrontation between Kayla and the man she had been trying to test.
The room was small but clean. A narrow bed stood against one wall. There was a desk beneath the window and a closet barely large enough for two suitcases.
Kayla stood in the doorway.
“I hate it.”
“You haven't even seen the bathroom.”
“I already hate it.”
I smiled.
“Fair.”
She walked inside anyway.
She opened the closet.
She looked at the window.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“How much?”
I told her.
She shook her head.
“I can't afford that.”
“Not today.”
“Exactly.”
“We'll keep looking.”
She looked at me.
“You really aren't kicking me out?”
“No.”
“Then why bring me here?”
“Because someday you will leave.”
Her eyes dropped.
“And I want that day to be because you're ready, not because everything explodes.”
She rubbed her hands together.
“I don't want to be dependent on you.”
“Then don't make yourself dependent.”
“That sounds easy.”
“It isn't.”
She looked toward the window.
“Do you think Eric knew I'd end up like this?”
“No.”
“You're sure?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“I just keep thinking he must have known something about me that I don't.”
I sat beside her.
“Kayla, what did he actually say when he ended things?”
She stared at the floor.
“He said he didn't want our life anymore.”
“That's all?”
“Yes.”
“No affair?”
“No.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Then why have you been acting like you need to catch someone doing something?”
Her face tightened.
“I don't know.”
I let the question remain.
On the drive home, she barely touched her phone.
She opened the rental listing.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Then she locked the screen and stared through the windshield.
About halfway home, I finally asked the question that had been sitting in my throat since the first towel.
“Why did you need Andrew to fail?”
She didn't answer.
I waited.
She looked out the window.
“Because Eric didn't cheat on me.”
I turned my head slightly.
“What?”
“He didn't.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“He didn't hit me. He didn't steal money. There wasn't another woman.”
She swallowed.
“There was nothing.”
The traffic light ahead turned red.
I stopped.
Kayla rubbed her thumb over the edge of her phone.
“Everybody keeps waiting for me to tell them what he did.”
“And there isn't anything?”
“No.”
She looked down.
“He just didn't want me anymore.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Kayla Finally Revealed Why Andrew Had to Fail Her Test, And the Answer Changed What I Thought Her Strange Behavior Had Really Been About
My Sister Arrived With Two Suitcases and a Broken Heart, But Within Days She Was Quietly Turning Our Home Into a Test I Never Agreed To
Part 3 of 12
