The irony. She wasn’t abandoned when I co-signed the lease, or when I paid her deposit, or when I covered her overdraft fees, bailed her out of a botched Airbnb situation, or sent her $500 “just until Friday,” which turned into radio silence for 4 weeks. No one called me then to ask how I felt.
Bethany didn’t talk to me for 2 days after the wedding. Then she showed up outside my apartment. Emily saw her through the peephole and didn’t open the door. Bethany banged for about 10 minutes, loud, rhythmic knocks like a kid trying to start a fight. Emily finally cracked the door open and asked her what she wanted. Bethany didn’t even say hi, just launched straight into demands.
She said she had 5 days to pay rent, and she’d already blown through her summer job money, that she was banking on the tuition deposit, that I had no right, that I had a moral obligation to follow through. Emily told her I wasn’t home. That was a lie; I was in the living room, but I wasn’t interested in speaking through a door. Not until she showed some kind of remorse, which she didn’t.
She left shouting something about legal rights, about how I couldn’t just yank everything without warning. But she was wrong. I checked the lease. I was the primary on the account; she was the resident. She had no power over it, not legally. I could pull the plug, and I had.
Three more days went by. She sent me an email with the subject line: “Are you seriously doing this?” Inside, she laid out a full breakdown of her upcoming expenses. She wanted me to reinstate the tuition. She said if I didn’t, she’d have to drop out for the semester, that if she got evicted, it would be on me.
Then she tried to manipulate me. She said she ruined the wedding because she was overwhelmed and that I should have understood that I was the only person in the family with real money and that I was letting it go to my head. I didn’t answer. I forwarded the email to Emily with a note:
“Your turn to read the circus.”
That’s when Bethany escalated. She showed up again. This time, she waited until Emily got home from work and tried to slip in through the door behind her. Emily didn’t scream. She grabbed Bethany by the arm, dragged her into the hallway, and told her if she ever tried that again, she’d call the police.