The message appeared on Cole’s phone while he was in the shower, and before the screen went dark, I learned that seven people I loved had spent more than two years building a happier life around my absence.
Chapter 3
Jake and Matt arrived first with beer and a portable speaker. Emma came next with cupcakes, followed by Ryan and Natalie. Maya swept in wearing a cashmere sweater and kissed my cheek as though we hadn’t sat across from each other days earlier while she lied effortlessly to my face.
“Sarah! You look gorgeous.”
“Thanks.”
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“That’s interesting.”
Her smile faltered, then returned.
Leo arrived last.
He wore the leather bomber jacket I had given him for high school graduation.
“Birthday boy!” Cole shouted.
Leo laughed as Cole grabbed him around the shoulders.
Then he saw me.
For half a second, something uncertain moved across his face.
“You came.”
“I live here, remember?”
His eyes dropped.
“Right.”
Everyone tried to act normal.
It was almost impressive.
They ate burgers from paper plates because most of the dishes were gone. People sat on the couch, windowsill, and floor. Jake made jokes about us being robbed. Emma complained that the apartment looked depressing without curtains.
Cole laughed too loudly at everything.
At seven, Emma brought out the cupcakes.
“Okay,” Cole said. “Candle time.”
“Before that,” I said, “I have a present.”
Leo grinned.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“It’s for everyone.”
I placed the box on the coffee table.
One by one, I removed the eight booklets.
The room slowly changed.
Maya stopped smiling first.
Cole recognized the title almost immediately.
“What is this?”
I handed him one.
“A memory book.”
He looked at the cover.
His face emptied.
Jake muttered, “Oh, man.”
Emma stood very still.
Leo stared at the words as though they might rearrange themselves if he waited long enough.
“Open them,” I said.
Nobody moved.
“Go ahead.”
Maya opened hers.
Page one contained the creation date of the group and Cole’s first message.
Made this so we can plan without Sarah policing everything.
Below it were responses.
Relief.
Jokes.
Complaints about my budgeting, my questions, my habit of wanting to know when people would arrive for dinner if I had cooked for them.
On page four was the escape room from my birthday weekend.
Page eight showed the barbecue Cole had called “mandatory overtime.”
Page eleven contained Maya’s fabricated work emergency.
Emma’s face hardened.
“You went through private messages?”
I looked at her.
“That’s what concerns you?”
“You accessed Cole’s account.”
“No. He left it synced on a device in our home.”
“This is unbelievably invasive.”
“Page nineteen.”
“What?”
“Open page nineteen.”
Emma did not want to.
Eventually, she did.
There was her message from six months earlier.
Sarah’s exhausting because everything has to mean something. You can’t just eat dinner. It has to be family dinner. You can’t just have drinks. She needs emotional connection. I swear she drains the oxygen out of a room.
Below it was a photograph from the weekend Emma had asked me to drive her to three bridal shops because she said no one else was available.
“You needed me when you needed a ride,” I said. “Apparently I was less exhausting in the driver’s seat.”
Emma sat down.
Maya’s eyes filled with tears.
“It wasn’t like this all the time.”
“No?”
“We vented.”
“For twenty-seven months?”
She wiped her face. “You can be intense, Sarah.”
There it was.
The explanation.
Not remorse.
A diagnosis.
“You borrowed five hundred dollars from me three months ago.”
Maya closed her eyes.
“Turn to page twenty-two.”
She did.
There was the screenshot.
Sarah loaned me the insurance money. Now she’ll probably act like she saved my life.
Maya covered her mouth.
“I never said that to you.”
“No. You were careful about that.”
Cole finally found his voice.
“This is insane.”
I turned toward him.
He was pale.
“You’re really going to blow up four years over a stupid chat?”
“No.”
“Then what is this?”
“The end.”
His face changed.
“What do you mean?”
“I moved out Friday.”
Everybody looked around the stripped apartment.
Cole stared toward the empty dining room.
“The furniture—”
“Is in my new apartment.”
“You moved out?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t just move out without talking to me.”
A laugh escaped me, quiet and astonished.
“You planned two years of your social life around avoiding me, but I’m required to schedule a meeting before leaving?”
“Sarah—”
“I also notified the management company that I’m not renewing the lease.”
His mouth opened.
“What?”
“The lease ends at the end of the month.”
“You can’t do that.”
“As primary leaseholder, I can decline renewal.”
“Where am I supposed to live?”
For the first time that evening, nobody defended him.
I looked at the couch.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
He came toward me.
“Sarah, come on. You’re angry. Fine. Be angry. But don’t destroy everything because we wanted some space.”
“Space?”
“That’s all it was.”
I looked around at the people who had eaten in my home, borrowed my money, accepted my gifts, called me family, and then coordinated lies so they could enjoy themselves without the inconvenience of my presence.
“You named your space,” I said.
Nobody answered.
“You called it A Happy Life Without Sarah.”
Cole rubbed both hands over his face. “It was a joke.”
“Twenty-seven months is a long joke.”
I took my keys from my purse and placed them on the counter.
The sound was tiny.
It seemed to fill the room.
“You wanted a life without me,” I said. “I’m done standing in the doorway.”
I turned to leave.
“Sis.”
Leo’s voice stopped me.
I closed my eyes briefly.
Then I faced him.
He had tears running down his cheeks.
“Please.”
He stood so fast he nearly stepped on the cupcakes.
“I’m sorry. I swear I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
“They were already doing it when I joined. Cole invited me, and Jake treated me like I was one of the guys, and I—I don’t know. I wanted them to like me.”
“You lied to me on Thanksgiving.”
His face collapsed.
“I know.”
“You were at Emma’s eating dinner while I saved you a plate.”
“I know.”
“You sent laughing emojis when they made fun of me.”
He cried harder.
“I was stupid.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You just needed me not to know.”
He reached for my wrist, then stopped himself.
“Sarah, you’re my sister.”
Something in me almost broke then.
Not because he said it.
Because I remembered every year that word had meant a responsibility to me.
When our father left, Leo had been twelve. I was seventeen and furious with the world. One night, after Dad had packed his truck while we were at school and disappeared to Arizona with another woman, Leo had sat beside me on the porch steps.
“At least he could’ve said goodbye to my face,” he had whispered.
I looked at the young man standing before me now.
“Do you remember what you said when Dad left?”
Leo’s breathing caught.
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
“You hated that he made his decision behind a closed door.”
“Sarah—”
“You spent two years doing the same thing.”
“I’m not Dad.”
“No.”
I spoke softly.
“You knew exactly how it felt.”
That landed.
He covered his face.
I wanted to put my arms around him.
Every older-sister instinct I had trained into myself screamed that he was hurting, that I knew how to fix hurting, that fixing him was what love meant.
But love without boundaries had brought me here.
“You need to grow up, Leo,” I said. “And I can’t do that for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your tuition next semester is your responsibility.”
His hands dropped.
“What?”
“I paid this semester. I won’t pay the next one.”
“Sarah, please.”
“Go to financial aid. Apply for work-study. Get a job.”
“You know Mom can’t afford it.”
“I know.”
His mouth trembled.
“So you’re just cutting me off?”
“I’m stopping the part where loving you means financing someone who laughs at me behind my back.”
He looked twenty again.
Then ten.
Then twenty.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I believe you’re sorry right now.”
That was all I could give him.
I walked out.
Behind the door, voices rose almost immediately.
Cole accused someone of telling me.
Emma blamed Maya.
Maya shouted that Cole had started the group.
Jake told everyone to calm down.
Leo began crying again.
By the time the elevator arrived, the happy life without Sarah was tearing itself apart.
