My sister slept with the man I was going to marry, got pregnant, and wanted to move into the house we had just bought, but when she changed the locks, she discovered that fate had another humiliation in store for her…

I can still hear his voice as clearly as that afternoon while we stood in our new home in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The house was filled with the scent of fresh paint and empty boxes, yet the keys in my hand felt like a promise that had just withered away.

Two hours before that moment, we had finally signed the paperwork for the house at the local notary office. I had the legal folder and all the receipts tucked into my bag along with a silly sense of excitement about the future.

I was already imagining lace curtains on the windows and slow Sunday mornings cooking breakfast in our brand new kitchen. I truly believed I finally had something solid like a real home and a man I was supposed to marry in three months.

Then my phone started ringing and I saw that the caller was my younger sister, Melody. Melody was always the type of person who wanted things that didn’t belong to her, smiling while she calculated exactly how much she could take from others.

We hadn’t spoken in two months because she had borrowed money for an emergency only to post photos from a luxury resort in Cabo. I answered the call on a sudden impulse without thinking about the consequences of speaking to her.