His voice was completely flat. It did not sound like him. It sounded like a recording of a stranger. “When wasn’t I there?” I asked. I could feel the heat rising in my neck. “I have been in this house every single day.

I cleaned, I cooked, I took care of your mother when she was dying of cancer.

When wasn’t I here, David?” He finally looked up, his eyes bloodshot and watery. “Ask your sister. She knows exactly when. She is the one who told me about your trip to the motel in Columbus five years ago. She has the receipts, Ellen. She showed them to me.” I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room.

A motel in Columbus? Five years ago, my mother was in the hospital. I did go to Columbus, but I stayed in the hospital chair for four days straight until she passed. My sister Sarah was supposed to be there, but she said she had a migraine.

I reached for my phone. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it onto his plate. I dialed Sarah’s number and put it on speaker. It rang three times. When she answered, her voice was cheerful, the same voice she used when she wanted to borrow something.

“Hey, Ellen! What’s up?” she asked. I could hear her television in the background. It was some game show she always watched. “David is sitting here,” I said, my voice shaking. “He just told me that you told him I stayed at a motel in Columbus five years ago with another man.

Sarah, did you tell him that?” The cheerful tone vanished instantly. The silence on the other end of the line was long and cold. I could hear her breathing, a shallow, ragged sound.

She did not deny it immediately. That was the moment I knew.

“I… David, you weren’t supposed to say anything,” Sarah stammered. Her voice sounded small and guilty. “You promised you wouldn’t bring my name into this.” I looked at David. His face had gone completely pale. He looked at the phone, then at me. “Sarah,” he said, his voice cracking.

“She is saying she was at the hospital with your mother. Is that true?” “Of course it’s true!” I screamed. I could not hold it in anymore. “I was holding Mom’s hand when she took her last breath, David! Where did you think I was?

Why would you believe her over me?” The truth came out in ugly, jagged pieces over the next ten minutes. Sarah had been jealous of our life for years. She had been divorced twice, her finances were a mess, and she could not stand that David and I had made it to thirty years.