LOVE AGAIN; AFTER HER BETRAYAL

THE REVEALING

The world sickened Melinda as the vivid colors of Ethan's tastefully appointed office, one moment away from a photograph of her life, twisted into a devastating, euphoric blur.

Melinda's breath crammed in her throat, it was a gagged scream. The seemingly long unidentifiable scent, now crystallized into the inescapable s*x musk overwhelmed by the retching sweetness of Sage’s perfume.

Ethan jumped back from Sage, frantically pushing her in pretentious disgust, his eyes springing wide with a fleeting terror as the door creaked open suddenly behind him. They caught Melinda’s widened eyes, and for a second, a flicker of something akin to guilt, or perhaps sheer surprise, flashed across his face.

Sage, untidy and half-clothed, moaned softly, pulling a loose sheet of paper across her in a failing attempt to maintain her modesty.

"Melinda! What're you --" Ethan began, struggling to sit up, his voice a thick, strained rasp.

Melinda didn't hear it. The words were meaningless to her as she was overwhelmed by the pounding in her ears, a dissonance of betrayal.

Her attention was focused on Sage, on the dip of her sister's neck that she knew, and the way her hair, so much like Melinda's own, was disheveled – Her little sister. The one she'd shared secrets with, confided in, loved blindly.

"Sage?" Melinda's voice was barely a whisper, a broken sound that wasn't hers. Her heart closed in an icy fist, numbing her lungs and leaving her breathless.

"How…?" Sage's expression twisted. "Lin, I I can explain." The words were flimsy, useless, like a tissue in a whirlwind.

"Tell me what exactly?" Melinda’s voice had risen, the quiver now an angry shake.

"Tell me why you're lying naked on my husband's couch? Tell me why you were just with him?" She waved wildly, her hand quivering so hard it felt like it belonged on someone else's arm.

Ethan, who had fought his way into his pants, stood awkwardly.

"Melinda, for goodness' sake, let's talk about this. Not here." His voice was more restrained now, a smooth vagueness which only seemed to make her madder. The audacity. The sheer audacity.

"Not here?" Melinda shrieked, her scream echoing off the slick walls, a voice anyone barely recognized as her own. "Where, Ethan? At home? Over our anniversary dinner I was preparing to surprise you with?" A bitter, mirthless laugh tore through her lips, on the edge of a sob. "My five year anniversary, Ethan. Our anniversary!"

In response, Sage's eyes, rimmed, red and on the verge of tears, fought to pull on a blouse she'd retrieved off the ground. "Melinda please don't do this. It's… it's complicated."

"Complicated?" Melinda spat, the term venomous upon her lips. "I certainly don't think there's anything complicated about it. This is simple, simply betrayal. How didn't I read between the lines? Of course, working late into the night proves to be very complicated.” She said sarcastically as her eyes darted back and forth between them, a pleading search for understanding, for a reason, for something that would justify this repulsive display. There was nothing. Nothing but the incontestable evidence of their nudity, their shame, their shared guilt.

Ethan managed to get himself together at last, zipping up his shirt with quivering hands. He attempted to clear his throat. "Melinda, I know this isn't looking real good, but you have to understand…"

"Understand what else, Ethan?" Melinda cut in, her voice now dark and ominous, the calm before the storm. "Understand that while I was planning our future, you were busy with my sister?” The question hung there, heavy and suffocating.

Then, with a sudden, savage movement, Ethan reached for a stack of manila envelopes on his desk. He had not gone to the trouble of cleaning the desk, the papers scattered there announcing the chaos of his betrayal. His hand trembled as he picked up the first envelope, his jaw clenched.

"Before you say one more word," Ethan's voice was gentle, unyielding, without the former fear.

"Maybe you should read these."

And then, with a quick jerk of his wrist, he threw the envelope at her. It whirled through the air and hit her in the middle of her chest, jolting her already unstable balance. It fell to the plush carpet at her feet, its contents partially spilling out.

Melinda stared at it, her mind not understanding the act, the brutality of it. Why was he hitting her? Was this some sort of odd diversion?

"What… what is this?" she breathed, her voice barely audible.

Ethan remained silent. He pulled out another envelope, the crisp white paper folding under his tight-fisted hand.

"Perhaps this one too" he scoffed, his eyes narrowed, a chill, calculating glint replacing the previous fear. He threw it with greater vehemence this time, and it struck her shoulder with a painful whack before thudding onto the ground.

Melinda winced as a fresh wave of shock washed over her. She looked from Ethan’s unyielding face to the envelopes on the ground, a whirling sense of horror rising in her gut. What were they? Why was he doing this?

Sage, who had sat silently sobbing, now looked up, her eyes wide with another kind of fear, a growing realization that seemed to mirror Melinda's own.

"Ethan, stop!” Sage cried, her voice momentarily hard, a cry of desperation.

"Please stop! This isn't fair!"

But Ethan did not listen to her. He was saturated with a cold anger, a desperate need to turn the tables, to hurt her as she had hurt him in that moment of revelation. He grabbed a third envelope, and a fourth, his movements becoming more erratic, more random.

"You think you’re the only one who can be hurt, Melinda?" he spat, his words dripping with venom. "You think you’re so innocent?"

Each envelope he threw contained a new photograph, some of them slipping out as they hit the floor around her, scattering like fallen leaves. Melinda’s eyes, blurred with tears and disbelief, slowly focused on the images.

The first image she truly remembered was of herself, laughing, her arm slung over a man whom she dimly recalled from a business conference last year. Nothing unusual, merely an offhanded pose. But the angle, the cropping, twisted the innocuous into something sinister.

Another was of her entering a restaurant with a male co-worker, again purely business, a business lunch. But the photo was shot from tight, close up to crop out context, so it appeared to be an improper rendezvous.

Then there were the worst. Photos of her, by herself, entering and exiting what appeared to be a hotel. Melinda did know that hotel, though. It was the one where she'd spent a night for a design showcase, an event that had taken her out of the house for three days. The dates on the photos, though, were conveniently omitted or blacked out.

The final envelope, delivered with particular force, burst open at her feet, spilling over her in a whirl of photographs. These were more damning. Pictures of her, clad in a flimsy nightie, walking down a hotel corridor, a foggy figure just visible in the background. Or of her, clad in a bathrobe, having coffee on a balcony, again, with a distorted figure out of focus in the distance. The graininess, the intentional blurring, the careful cropping – all designed to convey an adulterous tale.

Melinda looked at the pictures, her mind reeling. They were clearly doctored, or at the very least completely removed from context. She hadn't done something wrong. She hadn't cheated. But in Ethan's furious gaze, and likely anyone who saw these, they would be damning.

"What… what is all this, Ethan?" she stammered, the words now stuck with a fresh jolt of shock and pain. Her own betrayal, raw and searing, was now being thrown back at her, multiplied, and reflected with icy, calculated cruelty.

He was standing there, panting, his face contorted in a grimace of anger and… was there fear? Fear of discovery, perhaps, and this was his vengeful blow.

"Proof, Melinda," Ethan scoffed, piercing the trembling finger at the lying photos.

"Proof that you're no angel either. Don't play like you're the sole victim here."

Sage's eyes bulged in terror and something very close to waking horror, gazed at Ethan in genuine shock. This was a side of him she clearly hadn't anticipated.

Melinda stared down at the photographs, then at Ethan, and then at Sage, who was standing frozen, in the middle of a conflict she had helped to bring about. The headache that had plagued her all morning intensified, twisting itself into a serrated, nausea-inducing pain at the back of her head. The nausea recurred, more strongly now, an agitated turbulence of shock, anger, and a cold fear. The … of her nude self that morning, the empty memory, the strange room… it all fitted together with an outraging clarity.

She hadn't been at Sage's flat.

She hadn't been alone.

The understanding hit her with a punch, leaving her breathless. The indistinct figure in some of those hotel photographs… the woman Sage just asked her to call later…

A shiver of horrific knowledge settled in her belly. She looked up, not at Ethan, but at Sage, her eyes going hard, breaking her sister's panicked mask. The night, the drinking round, the blackout. It was all an act.

"You!" Melinda choked out, her voice trembling with rage at something horrific, making Ethan flinch. "You set me up. You brought me here. You… you let him…" She couldn't finish it. The pieces of the puzzle fitted together, and she looked at a picture much more repulsive than she could ever have imagined. The architect of her torment was not merely her husband — They were her very own relatives.