The house was quiet except for the faint hiss of paper being consumed by the sink’s running water. In the dim light of the kitchen, Lena stood, the burnt edges of a crumpled page floating like ash in the air.
“Eva, please, stop,” she said, her voice barely breaking the silence.
But her sister only smiled, a dark and distant look in her eyes. The smile didn’t reach her face, not really. It was the kind of smile that you put on when you know things have already fallen apart. And this, Lena knew, was the point of no return.
Mark had come home an hour ago, his footsteps dragging like the weight of a thousand unspoken regrets. He’d stepped into the living room, his eyes glassy, but there was no apology. No remorse. Just anger that bled out of him in a way that only someone who had been hurt so many times could hurt others in return.
He had been at his ex-girlfriend’s house. That much Lena knew. Eva, in a fit of emotion, had threatened to leave him if Lena didn’t go along, as if she knew the fragile thread holding her heart to Mark needed to be strengthened by anyone other than herself.
But Lena had refused, not because she didn’t care, but because she knew Eva could make her own decisions. Even when she saw Mark’s destructive behavior, even when Eva turned a blind eye to it, Lena had respected her sister’s autonomy. A decision that, in hindsight, had cost them both more than Lena could have imagined.
“Do you even care, Lena?!” Eva’s voice cut through the air, sharp as the blade of a knife. She pulled the last piece of paper from the countertop, holding it over the sink like a tiny torch. “He’s gone, Lena. He left me. And it’s your fault. You could’ve stopped it.”
Lena took a step forward, her heart hammering in her chest. “I didn’t want him here, Eva. I didn’t want to be involved in this. I didn’t—”
“Stop lying!” Eva screamed, her hand trembling as she held the paper near the flame. “If you cared about me, you would’ve done something. You could’ve made him stay. You should’ve made him stay!”
The words, like the paper in the sink, were soaked in sorrow, anger, and a kind of hopelessness Lena couldn’t escape. Eva had been drowning for months, years even, and Lena had watched, unsure of how to reach her.
Mark had broken up with her not out of some noble cause, but because the alcohol had stripped him of the last bits of decency he could manage. And yet, here they were, Eva blaming Lena for the wreckage.
“You can’t change it, Eva. He wasn’t good for you,” Lena said, her voice cracking. “He wasn’t good for either of us.”
But Eva only shook her head, the paper in her hand now crumbling, the flame flickering out. She dropped it into the sink with a finality that echoed in the silence between them.
“I should’ve never trusted you,” Eva whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “I should’ve known better.”
And then, as though the moment had ended, Eva turned away. Lena watched her sister retreat to the shadows of their home, the space between them growing wider with each step.
A decade passed after that night. Lena had tried to reach out, to mend the rift that had grown like an old wound between them. Eva, now older, had built a life without Mark. But in the quiet spaces of their occasional conversations, the blame still lingered, heavy and unspoken.
Now, it wasn’t Mark Eva blamed. It was Lena. For standing by, for not fighting harder, for not trying to drag her out of the relationship sooner.
The flames that Eva had once threatened to set to their home hadn’t consumed anything but her own hope.
And Lena? She still carried the weight of those burned words.
Joker's Wild 