I didn’t speak to Nancy anymore.

It was difficult to do considering we shared a home and family members but my determination was unparalleled. I woke up hours before Nancy so that I didn’t have to run into her while going to the bathroom to get ready for the day. I got breakfast on my way to the library to get my work done. I spent the majority of the day working and if I finished before dinner time, I stalled with superfluous trips to the market or the town's main street.

What made avoiding Nancy easier was that she didn't try very hard to talk to me. If we ever ended up in the same room, she simply ducked her head and looked for the nearest exit. I always beat her to it. This fight had been vastly unlike any other we ever had. There was no amount of humor, warm meals, or naps that could undo the hurt. It was not as simple as an apology or bribing me with a gift. This was the kind of thing people never got over.

Julio was the only person who was not tip-toeing around the house. He walked on clouds since the burden of keeping Nancy and Darren’s affair a secret was off his shoulders. I imagined he made the startling discovery while he was waiting for the wedding reception to start. He saw a bottle of wine and it was all too tempting to try and forget what he saw. Then Adonis was dead. Julio was the only one who knew about the affair. He didn’t want to add on to the pain and grief so he tried to keep it to himself. Doing that ate at him. He experimented with alcohol and drugs to see if they would provide relief. It was all right in front of me the whole time. I just hadn’t noticed.

He had made it clear that he thought what Nancy did was wrong - I mean, everyone knew it was wrong - but he reinforced the shame she must have been feeling. He was extra warm to me but treated Nancy as an outsider. He’d go out to get me something to eat - which I was prone to forgetting to do these days - but let Nancy figure out her own food situation. He’d ask me about my day and ask if I wanted to hang out but wouldn’t give Nancy more than an obligatory greeting.

Tìa handled things a little differently.

“I’m not saying that what she did was okay,” she said. Her sugary fruit scented perfume wafted over to me as she settled into the couch. She straightened her pencil skirt and pulled a sequin throw pillow into her lap. Lint clung to the sleeves of her black cardigan and her hair was straightened to a lifeless state like Nancy’s always was.

I had yet to see her talk to Nancy about how she betrayed Adonis and I. I had yet to hear her make a single comment about what happened at all. Yet, here she was, a few days later, cornering me when she saw that I was on the verge of tears because I had seen one of the framed photos on the mantle. It was taken on a lake trip Adonis and the family had gone on. Someone had put it face down.

“It’s just that Nancy is your sister," my aunt said while waving her painted nails around. “She is your family. Family is for life.”

All three sentences seemed like more reasons to be in despair. Nancy was my sister and if only for that reason and that reason alone, she should have said no to Darren.

“You and Darren have been together for a long time so I understand if it takes time to get over it but you never married him! You don’t ever have to see him again if you don’t want to. Nancy, however, is your family. You have to forgive her.”

“It’s barely been a week,” I said, wiping my tears with the sleeve of my wool sweater. “She did this on purpose. She did it to hurt me.”

“Because she thought you hurt her first.”

“That doesn’t make it okay!”

I was thrown back into a memory right then and there - many memories actually. They flipped through my head like the pages of an album, the plastic crinkling and the thick pages piling up onto one another. Nancy trying to convince me that I shouldn’t need to be in therapy for my PTSD anymore, Darren telling me I couldn’t take a trip to see the sequoias on my own because I was ‘bad at those kinds of things’, Adonis providing a swift change of subject when my uncle went on a tipsy rant about how sensitive I was. The most sour tasting flavor of nostalgia saturated my tongue. 

“Think about it like this: Nancy married someone who ended up not only hurting her but her whole family. She didn’t get to walk away from him. She has to be a single mother now and she doesn’t need the only family she has holding grudges against her,” my aunt argued. She raised her eyebrows, prompting me to respond to her 'reasonable' explanation. I could already predict what she would say if I didn’t accept it. She would say I was being illogical, thinking with my overly sensitive emotions.

I glanced back at the picture frame that had been turned on its face. I stared at the one person who would have told me my aunt was the one in the wrong. If I was being emotional, then she was being callous. He would have told me to ignore it. He would have told me to say whatever it was I had to in order to get out of the conversation. I was on my own now. I had to figure this out for myself.

“Adonis didn’t do anything wrong.”

Tìa fell back into the couch cushions, stunned. “Saying things like that is why Nancy thought you two were having an affair. Think about if the roles were reversed. If Nancy had said half the things you used to say about Adonis you would have known something was going on sooner.”

I suddenly understood what was going on. My aunt wasn’t trying to bring two sisters back together and preach forgiveness. She was defending Nancy.

“I think I’m going to go stay with Kimberly for a few days.”

It was something I had been thinking about ever since Vincent dropped me off back at home after I had run to the police station. I stayed with him for an hour or two. I mostly just sat in a chair pulled up to his desk and stared into space miserably. It was nice to have someone beside me while I did that though. When he held the car door open for me to get in his car, he asked if I had anywhere else I could stay if I wanted to be out of the house for a bit. I thought of Kimberly.

“If that is what it takes to put this drama behind you, then maybe you should.” I  gaped at how my aunt used the word drama without a hint of self awareness. Anyone could see that this wasn’t a petty spat.

I would not let her convince me I was being dramatic.

I was dodging Darren’s calls and texts. Whenever his contact photo popped up on my phone, whenever I saw the golden hair and dimpled cheeks I used to call mine, bile rose in my throat. Mine. I reveled in the discovery that somewhere in the layers of the blistering wound, was a childish anger that stung with intensity. He was mine. I had him first. Nancy took what was mine. 

Then I thought about how it was all too familiar.

I never fell in love with Adonis but only because Nancy never allowed me the chance to. According to her, I was too fragile, too vulnerable and no one would want my broken pieces - but they would want her. I didn’t long for an alternate reality where Adonis and I went on that first date but I did long for a reality where I hadn’t listened to those things Nancy said to me.

I found it ironic that Nancy would want anything that I had. That wasn’t what sleeping with Darren was about. Nancy didn’t want to be me: poor, broken Mickey. Nancy didn’t want the trauma of seeing our father shoot our mom. She didn’t want the years of sheltering, coddling, suffocating. She didn’t want to be shamed for being friends with her sister’s boyfriend. She didn’t want to be cheated on. She didn't want to be the target of angry criminal drug traffickers.

When I thought of Nancy and tried to picture what she wanted most in life, it was quicker to imagine what she didn't want. Only the best for Nancy. She would never take a tiny fraction of my life, even if it meant making things better for me. She was motivated by her own selfish desires.

At my boxing classes, Gina let me take on real opponents. She put me against other students of hers to spar and get a feel for what an actual fight would be like. Her critique for me was no longer that I was holding back but that I was being too reckless and eager. I knew it was because my anger was fueling me. When I went up against a woman a little younger than me, I found myself performing with a stamina I had never had before. While she tired quickly, I kept my guard up.

One class, I left with a bloody nose. Instead of freaking out when the warm liquid oozed past my lips and down my chin, I laughed. I told my opponent that I'd get her next time and washed the blood off without thinking about my mother or Adonis. That blood was mine. As I watched the copper water swirl down the drain of the sink, I reminded myself that it meant I was alive. It meant I had to keep living despite it all.

A few days later, Kimberly let me into her apartment with my duffle bag and pillow in tow. Perhaps it was the look I had on my face that caused her to pull me in by the sleeves of my coat without any hesitation. She gathered up the stack of clothes that were laid out on her sofa and formed a ball of them in her arms. She waddled across the room with caution as it partially blocked her vision and dumped them on a cushioned chair. She had probably been planning out her outfits for the week before I came over. Considering the love Kimberly had for fashion, I was greatly moved that she was risking hours of ironing just to make me comfortable in a time of distress.

“So,” she said, after we were both holding warm mugs of honey flavored tea. "What happened?”

Kimberly listened to me relay the last couple of days with a fastened gaze. She didn’t give me any of the nonsense excuses that my aunt did or try to say anything to fix it. She didn't even take it as an opportunity to say something nasty about Nancy though I knew she must have been tempted to. She said I could stay for as long as I needed and I could tell she meant it because she immediately pulled out the bed from inside the sofa and covered it with fresh sheets.

When it was time to sleep, I couldn’t. It wasn't a new experience. Ever since I found out about the affair, my mind had chosen this specific time of the day to ruminate on the idea of Nancy and Darren. I made myself sick by replaying all of the time I spent with Darren since the wedding, trying to spot a clue I had missed. I was plagued by images of his lips on Nancy’s neck and him holding her the way he held me.

When my phone buzzed from the table beside me, I immediately picked it up. It was a text from Vincent. 

Hey. How are you holding up?

I thought for far too long and then finally answered.

I’m alright. I know we should meet up soon to talk about the lead on Darren, I’ve just been so busy with work and stuff.

The three bubbles indicating he was typing popped up on screen. My phone buzzed and his text appeared.

I’m not texting you on behalf of the investigation. I want to know how you’re doing because what was done to you was cruel and I care about you.

I read the message over and over again. I held my phone to my chest and thought. I put it on the nightstand and turned my back to it. Then I reached for it, my fingers scrambling to type out what I wanted to say before I could stop myself.

How am I supposed to trust anyone ever again?

He replied quickly.

Time.

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