The Wrong Sister Read Online Free

confronted his wife. Walking into his bedroom, he found his wife unconscious, passed out after the bender she’d obviously indulged in today. The empty bottles lay strewn around her. He slumped against the door. How could this have become his life? How could she have become his wife? How could he have been so wrong about two people he cared about? Vickie and Micah. Their betrayal, and their consequent destruction of his once good life felt like a brick hitting him in the chest.
    ****
    Tracy stared hard at her husband. “You did this to Donny too?”
    “I wanted the same thing for him as I thought I could get for us.”
    Tracy started the incessant interrogation again. “But why? Why, in the first place, did you ever start that? I’ve never asked for anything more than what we have. I never even dreamed we’d live as well as we do. There was no reason to do that. We have a fantastic life and future. I just don’t see why you did that.”
    Micah heaved a long sigh from his tightened lips. He dropped down in the chair and held his nose carefully. He deserved so much worse than just a sucker punch in the nose. My God, he was a crook! An all-out crook, no different than if he held Donny up at gunpoint.
    He shook his head. “I know. It was never you. I know what I ruined. I just… wanted more. I work for rich assholes who never even notice the extra money I make for them. It’s nothing they need. It’s no more than numbers on statements. Money they never touch. Maybe I just wanted a little of it. And my dad… I guess I just wanted enough to be able to stick my finger up at my dad for saying I could never make anything of myself. You know how he is. His endless digs about what real men do. I kept thinking if I could just make enough, and be really impressive, he’d finally consider me up to his standards.”
    She stopped dead. His father? Micah did all that to prove himself to the selfish, narcissistic man who raised him? The man she barely allowed through her front door? Much less, near her daughters? His motivation behind it left her as broadsided as his deeds. Micah’s father was the most foul-tempered and dispiriting person she’d ever known. He’d always made Micah feel less than adequate for his entire life. They were a moderately wealthy family, but Micah failed him by not becoming the star athlete, student, scholarship-winner and perfection-striving robot that his older brother was. That was something his father never let him forget. Micah couldn’t stomach working for his father so he studied finance at a college that wasn’t nearly prestigious enough to earn his father’s approval.
    He met Tracy during his sophomore year in college. Micah’s college roommate and friend was the older brother of her best friend. They often ran into each other at her friend’s house and spent a spring break flirting before he finally asked her out seriously. Barely eighteen, she was still a senior in high school. They hit it off immediately and never broke up. She faithfully stayed with him through another three years of college. They got married at the beginning of his senior year. She moved with him to a no-name school, a small private college in northern California. He left his small, hometown in southern California pretty much just to get away from his father.
    Then he met Tracy.
    His family expected him to return home, but Tracy could not move away from her own family. She was born and raised in Calliston, California, and loved it, and had no desire to go anywhere else.
    So she began to completely disappoint his father, although Micah claimed he didn’t care. Screw the old man! But she knew how it ate at Micah’s self esteem and self respect. He still strove to gain the old bastard’s approval.
    She was no prize contestant for his father’s approval either. She was… in a word: ordinary. There was no other way to describe her then, or now. She was nice. She was fun. She had a pretty smile. She was an average