Romance

Three Years Of Guilt Built On A Lie

by Cherry Blossom

The 19th time I caught my husband cheating, the woman he was with vanished into thin air yet again.My entire family insisted I was suffering from severe paranoia. That was until I overheard Carter Ricci whispering into his phone."I'm sick of hiding. I want us out in the open."In a fit of rage, I exposed my younger sister on social media and threw scalding water in her face. Devastated, she jumped from the 20th-floor balcony on her birthday.My father's hair turned gray overnight, and my mother slapped me hard across the face.For the next three years, they punished me with relentless cold shoulders and made me live with the guilt of my sister's death.On the anniversary of her death, they forced me to drive across the city in the pouring rain to find a bottle of the rare perfume she had loved, as if that could somehow atone for what I'd done.But when I finally pushed open the front door, soaked to the bone, I heard my supposedly dead sister laughing inside. My entire family was gathered around her, helping her cut a birthday cake.My father gazed at her affectionately. "If I hadn't brought Eliza home from foster care back then, you wouldn't have had to hide in the shadows all these years."My mother sighed. "Otherwise, she'd probably still be clinging to Carter and driving everyone crazy."My husband stroked her long hair. "Once Eliza gives birth, I'll tell her the truth. Then the three of us can finally live happily ever after."The truth was horrifying.The faked death that had driven me to the brink of madness, along with the crushing guilt that had trapped me for three years, was nothing more than a carefully orchestrated conspiracy.But there was something none of them knew.My unborn baby and I didn't have much time left.

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