Chapter 5 - WHAT MY MOTHER MADE KAYLA DO
My sister had been thirteen years old when my parents’ marriage collapsed.
I had been nineteen and living four hours away at college.
Mom told me Dad had been having an affair.
Dad never denied that he had betrayed her.
So I never asked many questions.
I should have.
“What do you mean Kayla caught him?” I asked.
Mom sighed.
“She saw things.”
“What things?”
“Your father was meeting another woman.”
“And Kayla happened to see them?”
Silence.
That silence told me everything.
“Mom.”
“It was complicated.”
“Did Kayla happen to see them?”
“No.”
Andrew stood beside me, listening.
My mother lowered her voice.
“I asked her to watch him.”
My stomach turned.
“You asked a thirteen-year-old to spy on her father?”
“I needed proof.”
“You had me.”
“You were away.”
“You had friends. Adults. A lawyer.”
“I was desperate.”
I closed my eyes.
Suddenly, Kayla’s obsession with tests looked different.
Not acceptable.
But understandable in a way I hadn’t expected.
“What did you make her do?”
“I didn’t make her do anything.”
“Mom.”
“She followed him once.”
“Once?”
No answer.
“Mom.”
“A few times.”
I felt sick.
“She photographed him?”
“Yes.”
“Read his messages?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Andrew slowly shook his head.
My mother became defensive.
“He was lying to us. I was trying to protect my daughters.”
“No. You made one of your daughters responsible for proving whether her father was faithful.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s exactly what you just described.”
Mom’s voice cracked.
“You weren’t there.”
She was right about that.
I hadn’t been.
But Kayla had been a child.
Then Mom said something worse.
“Afterward, Kayla always said she would never be blindsided like I was.”
There it was.
The beginning of the tests.
The fake accounts.
The notebook.
The towels.
Not born from one breakup.
Born from a thirteen-year-old being taught that love meant investigation.
Andrew touched my shoulder.
Upstairs, something fell.
Kayla had been listening.
She stood halfway down the staircase.
Her face was wet.
“You promised you’d never tell her.”
Mom heard her through the phone.
“Kayla—”
“You promised.”
My sister looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.
Anger.
Shame.
Pain.
Then she walked downstairs.
“I was thirteen,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her voice broke.
“She made me sit outside motels.”
I stared at her.
Mom started talking through the phone.
“Kayla, that is not what happened—”
Kayla grabbed the phone from me.
“You made me photograph Dad getting out of a car with Aunt Rachel.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“Aunt Rachel?”
My mother’s younger sister.
The woman who had disappeared from family gatherings shortly before the divorce.
Kayla looked at me.
“Mom didn’t tell you that part?”
I shook my head.
Her laugh was empty.
“Then maybe you should ask her why.”
Mom said nothing.
Kayla handed the phone back.
May you like
Then she whispered:
“Because Dad wasn’t the only person lying.”
