Free Her Favorite Temptation by Sarah Mayberry

she’d worked her way into from a lowly clerk’s role, but apparently a new CEO had been appointed and heads were rolling left, right and center.
    “So far we’ve lost six people from our department. But it turns out we’re the lucky ones—he’s really cut through the marketing and accounting departments,” Audrey said.
    Leah felt a surge of panic for her sister. What a stressful and horrible situation to be in. “It sounds as though you were lucky to keep your job.”
    “Yeah. It feels that way at the moment, believe me. Morale is at an all-time low. No one feels safe,” Audrey said.
    “Do you think they’ll be letting more people go?” her mother asked.
    “I don’t know. I’m keeping my head down and hoping.”
    Leah could see her sister was genuinely afraid, even though she was doing her best to appear matter-of-fact.
    “That sounds scary,” Leah said. “I’d be freaking out if I was you.”
    “That won’t ever be you, darling. People with your skills don’t grow on trees,” her father said, patting her arm reassuringly.
    As though she was the one who needed reassuring. Leah felt rather than saw her sister’s reaction to their father’s sleight—the smallest of flinches, as though he’d dealt her a direct hit. Which he had, verbally if not physically. Embarrassment and guilt flooded Leah as she watched her sister adjust the starched linen napkin in her lap, her gaze carefully downcast as she fought to regain her composure.
    All her life, Leah had sat by while her parents dealt out these kinds of backhanded blows to her sister. It had never been enough that she, Leah, be praised—Audrey must always be held up in comparison and found lacking in some way, too. When she was younger, Leah had basked in her parents’ approval and attention. What kid didn’t want to be the star of the show? But as she’d matured, she’d started to feel increasingly uncomfortable about their family dynamics. She’d begun to realize that in order for her to be special , Audrey had to be flawed. Sometimes the comparison was so subtle, it was almost undetectable. But it was always there, bubbling beneath the surface.
    She’d scarcely gotten a grip on her own role in this messed-up melodrama when her sister had disappeared. She’d been twelve, Audrey barely sixteen. One night they were all around the dinner table, the next morning Audrey’s bedroom was empty, the curtains billowing in the breeze from the open window. Her sister had left a note, telling their parents that she’d gone to live with her boyfriend, Johnny, because he “believes in me and makes me happy.”
    Leah hadn’t even known her sister had a boyfriend, let alone that he was old enough and employed enough to have a house she could share. As it turned out, he was seventeen and a squatter, breaking into empty houses and living there until the authorities drove him and his friends out. Lord only knew what else he’d gotten up to on the side. Audrey had lived that life with him for eighteen months before she collapsed with pneumonia at a train station in the city and was rushed to hospital. Even then she’d held off for several days before finally giving the hospital permission to call their parents.
    To this day, Leah would never forget the terror she’d felt during those long, dark eighteen months. Every time she’d seen a newspaper headline or heard a news-at-six bulletin about a girl being attacked or a body found, she’d felt sick to her stomach until learning enough to know it wasn’t her sister. She’d promised herself that if Audrey ever came home again, things would be different between them. She would make an effort to be closer, to bridge the gap that had always existed between them. She’d show Audrey that she loved her.
    Then Audrey had come home and been so repentant and cowed, so withdrawn, that Leah hadn’t been able to find a way in to say or do any of the things that she’d intended.
    All these years later, not much had