“What on earth is this?”
“Three rooms for rent,” Andrew said. “All within twenty minutes of here.”
She swiped the screen. “Andrew, you can’t do that!” she shouted.
“I found three listings.”
“You’ve been looking for apartments for me?”
“Rooms.”
“You can’t throw me out!”
“I’m not.”
She turned toward me. “Amanda, are you seriously letting your husband kick me out of your house?”
“Andrew isn’t kicking you out,” I said. “But temporary needs an end date.”
“Because I wore a towel?”
I moved the toast off the hot pan before it burned. “I asked you not to do something in my home, and you decided I needed to convince you my reason was good enough.”
She pulled the towel tighter under one arm. “So this is punishment.”
“No. If I wanted to punish you, I’d have let you keep eating Andrew’s cereal. He buys the terrible kind.”
Andrew pointed at me. “Unnecessary.”
Kayla didn’t laugh. “I’m heartbroken, Amanda. I have no money. I don’t even have a job yet.”
“I know.”
“And you’re giving me a deadline?”
“I’m giving us a plan.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
She looked at Andrew. “And you. You’ve been acting like I’m some kind of predator all week.”
Andrew picked up his coffee. “No.”
“You leave every time I come into the room.”
“The first time, I left because it was awkward,” he admitted. “After Amanda asked you to stop, I left because I wasn’t participating anymore.”
“In what?”
“Whatever experiment you thought you were running. You kept trying to make me a character in an argument with my wife.”
For once, Kayla had no quick answer. Then she looked at me. “You told him to say that.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t even know he was looking at rooms.”
Andrew glanced at me. “I probably should’ve told you.”
“Yes.”
“I thought staying out of it meant saying, ‘She’s your sister.’” He rubbed one thumb along the handle of his mug. “Really, I left you enforcing a boundary that affected both of us.”
I looked at him. I hadn’t expected that.
I want to say a little more about that admission, because it landed harder than the towel argument itself. Andrew and I had never really had a moment like that before, five years into a marriage that had mostly run smoothly precisely because we rarely had to navigate anything this layered. Watching him name his own withdrawal out loud, without me having to point it out to him first, told me something about how seriously he’d actually been taking the situation underneath his outward calm. It wasn’t nothing to me. I filed it away, some quiet recalibration happening in the back of my mind about what “staying out of it” was actually going to mean for us going forward, in this situation and whatever came after it.
Kayla gave a disbelieving laugh. “Great. Marriage workshop complete. Can I go get dressed now?”
“Please,” I said.
She turned toward the stairs.
“And Kayla?”
She stopped.
“One of those rooms is open now. The woman showing it is free this afternoon.”
Kayla swung around. “You made me an appointment?”
“I found a listing,” Andrew answered.
I picked up his phone and looked at it. A bright upstairs bedroom. Shared kitchen. Small backyard. Nothing luxurious. Nothing awful. Just a room.
I held the phone toward Kayla. “We’re going to look at it.”
“I’m not moving there.”
“Then don’t. We’re still looking.”
She frowned. “You can’t make me.”
“You’re right.” I set the phone down. “But if you’re staying here while you figure out your next step, I need to see you taking one.”
Kayla stared at me. Then she marched upstairs. A door shut.
Andrew took a sip of coffee. “Think that went well.”
I looked at him. “Not one word.”
“Understood.”
Twenty minutes later, Kayla came downstairs in jeans and a sweatshirt. She had also found the ugliest old robe in our linen closet and thrown it over one arm.
She dropped it onto a chair as she passed. “Happy?”
I looked at it. “Thrilled.”
The room for rent belonged to a woman named Renee. She was about Kayla’s age and worked from home three days a week. The house was small but clean. Kayla inspected the bedroom twice. The second time, she opened the closet and stood there longer than necessary.
Renee showed us the kitchen. “I don’t care if you cook late,” she said. “Just clean up afterward. Quiet after eleven during the week. We split paper products.”
Kayla nodded.
“Anything you need from somebody you live with?” Renee asked.
Kayla looked caught off guard. “Me?”
“Yeah. Anything that drives you crazy?”
Kayla thought. “Don’t borrow my clothes without asking.”
“Okay.”
Renee moved on toward the laundry room. Kayla stayed where she was.
“That’s it?”
Renee looked back. “What?”
“Don’t borrow my clothes without asking.”
“You don’t want to know why?”
“They’re your clothes.” She shrugged. “Seems reasonable.” Then she kept walking.
Kayla didn’t. I watched my sister stare at the closet door.
