Page 27 of Sweet Ruin

I ended up pulling on Connor’s shirt, a raggedy gray tee from a 10K he never ran. It stuck to me and made me feel like a wet dishrag the whole afternoon.

The ashamed heat accumulates in every part of me. Every spot of my body they point out, I feel it warming. My face, my hips, my thighs, my stomach, my appetite, the snort I make when I laugh too hard. All of it is just fuel for them.

I don’t even know where to direct my rage. They’re both equally responsible.

Half the time, he’s the one who starts it. He hands her the setup and she takes the swing, then he comes back in underneath with something worse. They’re a duo. They’ve got timing. They’re tighter as a comedy act than he and I ever were as a marriage.

You’d almost admire the teamwork, if you weren’t the material.

But, like the masochist I am, I make myself read every single one.

I don’t have to. My job here is to gather the evidence, and I could do that with my eyes half-closed. Just photograph and scroll, photograph and scroll, get in and get out.

I do, though. I read all of it. In their voices, just so it hurts that much more.

I don’t know what to call that instinct.

Not brave. Not smart, either.

I just don’t want to be told about my own life secondhand ever again.

The last bit is from yesterday morning, minutes after Vivian left my counter with her free desserts.

VIVIAN: mixup with my photos. i handled it. do NOT text me till i say so.

CONNOR: What did you do?

She didn’t reply.

I need a second to recalibrate. I swipe apps on my phone and check to be sure that Connor hasn’t moved.

Sure enough, he’s where I left him, halfway between a Sephora and a Yankee Candle. He’s probably buying me something out of the clearance bin with a bow on it, and then heading into Victoria’s Secret to get something frilly and crotchless for my skinnier, prettier sister.

Gulping, I step back and assess the situation. The facts are thus:

For at least fourteen months, my husband has been sleeping with my sister.

They typically booked rooms at the same hotel, the Marriott by the Brooklyn Bridge.

They went to one the night we buried my father.

They wrote jokes about my body the whole time. He wrote as many of them as she did.

At some point along the way, someone whom I assume to be Connor forged my name on a loan document for a company named V Haven Holdings, LLC, taking out an unspecified amount of money in my name.

Tonight, I intend to expose both Vivian and Connor for what they’ve done.

I’ve got the stage set at my mom’s house. A big projector screen patiently waiting to broadcast their lies and adultery.

One question remains. In the grand scheme of things, it might not even be that important.

But it feels important to me.

The question is, Do I include the jokes?

I want to. Oh, God, how badly I want to. I’m the butt of them! The scorn was aimed at me!

But cutting them would mean shielding Connor and Vivian from their own words in order to protect my own feelings.