An aunt casually mentioned that they had stopped attending church and family events together. Someone else let slip that Chloe had been staying on a friend's couch for a week. My mother started making vague melodramatic posts online about supporting loved ones through unimaginable betrayal, which was so completely lacking in self-awareness that I almost admired the sheer audacity of it.
Then one rainy Tuesday afternoon while I was on maternity leave, my phone rang. It was an unknown local number. I answered it because I was actively waiting on a call back from Maya's pediatrician regarding a mild rash. It wasn't the doctor.
It was my sister. Her voice was incredibly soft in a way I hadn't heard since we were teenagers. Too soft. It was that manufactured, carefully calibrated softness she used when she wanted something.
"Hey," she breathed into the phone. "Can we please talk?" My whole body instantly went rigid. Every muscle tensed. I should have hung up the phone immediately.
Instead, my morbid curiosity won again. I said, "Talk about what, Chloe?" She took a ragged theatrical breath and dropped the news. She told me she and Greg were getting a divorce.
I didn't say a single word. I just stood in my living room staring blankly at the television. Then she started crying. "Elena, there's another woman." There are rare moments in life when the universe hands you exactly the kind of poetic, devastating irony you always thought you wanted.
And surprisingly it feels absolutely nothing like satisfaction. It just feels sad and dirty. She sobbed and told me she had found hidden text messages on his iPad. He had been secretly seeing a 24-year-old coworker for over 6 months.
He had used the exact same tired excuses with Chloe that he had used with me years ago. He was working late on a huge project. He needed space to decompress.
He was feeling suffocated and misunderstood at home. Her voice cracked pitifully when she said, "I know you're probably thrilled about this. I know you're happy."
I genuinely wasn't. I wasn't deeply sad for her the way a loving, connected sister would have been, but I certainly wasn't happy. Mostly, I just felt a profound, heavy exhaustion. "I'm not happy, Chloe," I said quietly.