Page 146 of The Sinner: James

The reality is, I can’t afford to go home or anywhere else for that matter. Frankly, I can’t afford anything since I’m not making a living. I'm barely crawling at the bottom of the barrel, and my mom’s finances aren’t that great, either.

Not after the divorce.

She made me swear I wouldn’t talk to anyone about our situation, not even Eve.

My mom is too proud to accept help, especially from Eve’s parents, who'd always thought we were well off.

And for the longest time, we were, or so we thought, but that was the biggest lie of all.

For so many years, we had lived a blessed life, and then it all crumbled, and we woke up to a different reality.

Our privileged life came with a price tag we couldn’t afford, so my parents had to take drastic measures to rectify the situation.

They sold the house and everything we owned.

My mom rented a small place while my dad moved on with his life.

Amidst the scandal, a lot of inconvenient truths wrecked our lives. My dad’s business, the cars, and the house were nothing but enormous debts.

They liquidated everything they could, including my car, and the little money I got from them after paying off my loan helped me cover the first two months of living expenses here.

The other thing I couldn’t tell Eve was that, although I’m still in touch with my mother, she couldn’t forgive me for what I did to them, for dramatically changing their lives.

She had avoided the ugly truth about Daria’s sexual escapades and my dad’s indiscretions all her adult life, yet she knew what was going on.

She didn’t seem surprised when I revealed the truth and offered her irrefutable proof. I was so eager to open her eyes and had no clue how much I hurt her.

But she knew it.

Yeah…

She must’ve known.

In hindsight, I understand how cruel it was to force her to acknowledge what had been going on behind her back for so long.

To make her see it with her own eyes.

No woman should go through that.

Betrayal is heart-wrenching on its own, let alone when it’s soaked in sordid details.

It was devastating to her, and it crushed me when it finally dawned on me why she couldn’t face the truth.

Had she done it earlier, she would’ve had to change her life, and she just couldn’t do it.

It was her weakness, and it wasn’t my place to judge her.

Her heart and entire existence were on the line when I coaxed her into making a choice, which was a foolish thing to do.

It made no sense to her.

It still doesn’t.

She firmly believes an inconvenient truth rarely does something good and frequently ruins people’s lives.

'Lies make life more bearable,’she used to say.

And I argued with her because I didn’t want to believe her, yet she was right.

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