Chapter 5: What Kayla Was Afraid Of
Kayla pulled the window shut.
Thirty seconds later her footsteps came down the stairs fast, and she appeared in the doorway behind Andrew and me with one suitcase already in her hand and her bag over her shoulder.
She looked at Daniel.
"Why are you here?"
"I came to talk to Andrew."
"I told you not to come here."
"And I told you not to make a scene this morning." Daniel's easy manner had dropped entirely now.
His voice was flat.
"You didn't listen, so here we are."
I stepped to the side so I could see both of them clearly.
This was not two people who had been casually texting for two months.
This was two people in the middle of something that had already gone wrong, trying to manage the damage in real time.
"Kayla," I said.
"What is he actually here for?"
She looked at me.
Her eyes were red at the edges, not from crying — from something closer to exhaustion.
"Ask him," she said.
"I'm asking you."
She set her suitcase down on the porch.
She crossed her arms.
She looked at Daniel for a long moment with an expression I couldn't fully read, and then she looked back at me.
"He told me Andrew had a separate investment account," she said.
"One you didn't know about.
He said Andrew had been moving money into it for two years.
He said if I came and stayed here, I could find the account statements — they'd be in the home office, in the filing cabinet — and photograph them.
He said he needed proof before he could go to a lawyer."
The porch went completely quiet.
I turned to Andrew.
Andrew was looking at his brother.
"There is no separate account," Andrew said.
His voice was very controlled.
"I know that now," Kayla said.
"I went through the filing cabinet on day four.
There was nothing.
I told Daniel and he said to keep looking, that I must have missed it." She stopped.
"I didn't miss it.
It doesn't exist."
"Then why did you keep doing it?" I asked.
"Why did you keep coming downstairs in that towel, keep pushing, keep —"
"Because he told me to." She said it quietly.
"He said if I could make Andrew look bad — if I could create a situation that looked like something inappropriate was happening — then you'd be more likely to believe the account story.
That you'd want to investigate Andrew yourself." She looked at the ground.
"I know how that sounds."
"It sounds like you were willing to destroy my marriage," I said.
She didn't answer.
That was its own kind of answer.
Daniel made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"Kayla, you are unbelievable.
You came here on your own.
You agreed to this on your own."
"You told me my sister was being deceived."
"And you believed it because you wanted to." He looked at Andrew.
"She's always been jealous of what you two have.
I just gave her a reason to act on it."
Kayla's head came up.
"That is not —"
"You went through their filing cabinet, Kayla.
You went through their personal documents.
Don't stand there and act like I dragged you here in handcuffs."
"You lied to me about the account —"
"And you lied to your sister about having nowhere to go." He spread his hands.
"We both did things.
The difference is I'm not pretending otherwise."
I looked at my sister.
She was looking at me, and for the first time since she'd arrived, the performance was completely gone.
No eye rolls, no manufactured ease, no careful expression chosen at the top of the stairs.
Just her face, which I had known my entire life, and which right now looked like someone standing in a room they had set on fire and only just noticed the smoke.
"I didn't find anything," she said.
"I want you to know that.
I looked, and there was nothing, and I stopped."
"But you kept coming downstairs in that towel."
A long pause.
"Yes."
"After I asked you twice."
"Yes."
I didn't say anything.
Andrew stepped forward.
He looked at Daniel with the kind of stillness that is not calm — the kind that comes just before something permanent is decided.
"You sent my wife's sister into my home to go through my financial records," he said.
"You fabricated a story about a secret account to manipulate her into doing it.
And when it didn't work, you came here to manage the fallout before I could hear the truth from someone else." He paused.
"Did Dad know about this?"
Daniel's jaw shifted.
"No."
"Does anyone else know?"
"No."
"Then this ends here." Andrew's voice didn't rise.
"You're going to get in your car.
You're not going to contact Kayla again.
You're not going to contact my wife.
If I find out you've repeated any version of this story to anyone in the family, I will call Dad myself and I will tell him everything — including the money you borrowed and never returned." He held his brother's gaze.
"Are we clear?"
Daniel looked at him for a long moment.
Then he looked at me.
Then he looked at Kayla, and something passed across his face — not regret, exactly, but the recognition that the thing he'd built had not held.
"Crystal," he said.
He walked back down the path to his car.
He didn't look back.
The engine started and the car pulled away from the curb and he was gone.
The three of us stood on the porch in the quiet he left behind.
Kayla picked up her suitcase.
"I'll call a cab," she said.
"Kayla —"
"Please." She shook her head.
"Just let me go.
I'll call you when I've — I'll call you."
She walked down the path to the sidewalk and sat on her suitcase with her phone in her hand.
I watched her for a moment.
Then I went inside.
Andrew closed the door behind us.
I stood in the hallway and looked at the staircase and the kitchen beyond it — my house, my ordinary Sunday morning house — and felt the strange sensation of something having passed through it and left.
Andrew put his hand on my shoulder.
"Are you all right?"
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
He nodded.
"That's fair."
I looked at him.
"Is there anything I should know?
Anything Daniel could have found, if Kayla had looked harder?"
He met my eyes without flinching.
"No."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
I believed him.
I realized I had believed him the whole time, even in the worst moment of it, even standing in the hallway listening to my sister say his brother's name.
That was the thing Daniel had miscalculated.
He had built his plan on the assumption that doubt was already there, waiting to be lit.
It wasn't.
But I also knew this wasn't finished.
Because Kayla had said one thing that was still sitting in the back of my mind, quiet and unresolved.
*He told me Andrew had a separate investment account.
One you didn't know about.*
Daniel had invented the account.
That part was clear.
What wasn't clear was how Daniel had known enough about our finances — our real finances — to make the lie sound specific enough that Kayla had believed it.
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Someone had told him something.
I just didn't know who yet.
