Chapter 7: The Rent

On Friday night, Foundry Taproom was packed to the walls.

My brother stood behind the bar in his cap, pouring a stout for a man in a tie.

He was laughing, easy and loud, with the whole bar watching him.

I walked in with my mother on one side of me and my father on the other.

My mother had insisted on coming.

"We are going to settle this as a family," she had said in the car, and she hadn't looked at me once.

Colin saw us and the laugh stalled.

"Hey, Mom. Dad." He wiped his hands on a towel. "Wendy. Good, you came to apologize."

"I came to talk about the rent," I said.

My father frowned.

"What rent?"

"Not now," Colin said quickly. "Wendy, let's do this in the back."

"No."

I stepped up to the bar.

A few heads turned, and the table nearest us stopped talking.

Evan's boxes had been sitting on my front porch since noon.

The locksmith had come at one.

I had not felt this calm in three years.

"Wendy," my mother said, her voice sharp. "You humiliated that girl in front of a whole lobby."

"I did," I said. "And I'd do it again."

"She's your best friend!"

"She slept with my boyfriend for a year, Mom."

My mother's mouth stayed open.

My father turned his head slowly toward me.

"That's not what Colin told us."

"I know it isn't."

I looked at my brother.

He was holding the towel in both hands.

"Colin told you I had a breakdown," I said. "He told you I got jealous because I couldn't go on one ride."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Five of Us Went to the Theme Park, They Only… from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.