Chapter 4 - The Final Confrontation
A month later, the doorbell rang.
I opened it to find Natalie. She looked drastically different. The glamorous, arrogant girl in the red dress was gone. She wore sweatpants, no makeup, and her roots were showing. The baby bump was now visible.
"Please," she said, her voice shaking. "Mom and Dad won't talk to me. Marcus is gone. Eric told me to rot in hell. I'm being evicted from my apartment."
I stood in the doorway, blocking her path. I felt nothing. No anger, no pity, no sadness. Just a profound emptiness where my love for my sister used to be.
"Why are you here, Natalie?"
"You're my sister," she cried, thick tears rolling down her cheeks. "You always took care of me. You paid off my credit cards when I was in college. You always protected me."
"I protected you because I thought you were family," I said quietly. "But you took the man I loved, brought him into your bed, and then tried to publicly humiliate me in front of three hundred people. You wanted to break me."
"I was jealous!" she sobbed, dropping to her knees on the porch. "You always had everything! The perfect house, the perfect husband, the money! I just wanted what you had! I'm sorry!"
"You didn't want what I had, Natalie. You just wanted to take it from me."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out an envelope. I dropped it on the ground in front of her.
"What is this?" she sniffled.
"It's a cashier's check for ten thousand dollars. It’s enough to get a new apartment and pay for your medical bills until the baby comes. It is the absolute last thing you will ever receive from me. Do not call me. Do not come to my house. If I see you on the street, I will walk past you like a stranger."
She looked up at me, terrified. "You're abandoning me?"
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"You abandoned me the day you opened your legs for my husband," I said.
I stepped back inside and closed the door. I listened to her cry on the porch for ten minutes before she finally took the envelope and walked away. I locked the deadbolt. The chapter of my life involving Natalie and Eric was officially, permanently closed.
