Four People, Four Tickets, They Treated Me Like a Shadow, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not Your House

Bernadette sits Freya at the kitchen table, takes her car key and tells her she lives there by mercy; Stanton picks his mother, and Freya leaves her ring on the counter and walks out with one bag.

I took a rideshare home from the airport, because Stanton had loaded his family into his truck and left without me.

The house on Fairmont was dark and quiet when I let myself in.

I stood in the front hall and listened to the clock.

Six years I had lived in that house. I had never once come into it alone and felt it was mine.

I went upstairs and pulled the gray duffel out from under the bed.

It didn't take long to pack, because there wasn't much that belonged to me.

I took two pairs of jeans and my work scrubs.

I took my father's green flannel shirt, which I kept folded at the back of the drawer so Bernadette wouldn't call it a rag.

A photo of him in his mechanic's coveralls, squinting at the camera.

I was zipping the bag when I heard the garage door.

By the time I got downstairs, they were in the kitchen.

Bernadette sat at the head of the table with her coat still on.

Stanton stood behind her chair.

Brittany leaned on the counter with her phone face down, for once.

"Sit," Bernadette said.

"I'm fine standing."

"Sit down, Freya."

I sat.

I don't know why I did. Six years of habit is hard to break in a single morning.

"I want to say something to you, and I want you to listen," Bernadette said. "I'm not angry."

She folded her hands on the table.

"I took you in when your father died. You were twenty-two and you had nothing.

"His debts took every cent, and I never said a word about it."

"Mom," Stanton said quietly.

"Let me finish. I paid for your wedding. I gave you a room.

"I put your name on a card so you wouldn't feel like a guest in your own marriage.

"And this morning you embarrassed me in front of strangers."

"You didn't buy me a ticket," I said.

"We discussed that."

"You discussed it. I was never in the discussion."

Brittany made a small sound in her throat, almost a laugh.

"She's got a mouth on her now," she said. "It's the video. The comments went to her head."

"How many views?" Bernadette asked her.

"Two hundred thousand. And they're not all on our side, Mom."

Bernadette's jaw moved.

"Take down the video, Brittany," she said, very calmly.

"It's the best post I've ever had!"

"Take it down."

Brittany picked up her phone, scowling.

Bernadette turned back to me.

"The car keys," she said, and held out her hand. "The Corolla is titled to Stanton, so it isn't yours to drive. You can have it back when you've apologized."

I looked at her open palm.

"I need that car to get to work."

"Then you'll need to apologize quickly."

I looked at Stanton.

He was looking at the salt shaker.

"Stanton."

"Babe. Mom's heart." He rubbed the back of his neck. "She's sixty-one. She's been up since three. Just say you're sorry, and we'll put it behind us."

"For what?"

"For the scene."

"The scene where I cancelled the trip you made me book for people who wouldn't sit next to me?"

"Freya."

"Say it for me, Stanton. Say you were wrong to let her say that."

He opened his mouth.

I waited, and I think I waited a full minute for him.

"You embarrassed her," he said at last. "I'm sorry, but you did."

Something small in my chest went quiet.

It wasn't a break.

I had waited years for something to break, and when it came it was only quiet.

I took the car key off my ring and set it in the middle of the table.

Then I took off my wedding ring.

It came off hard, because I had never taken it off.

I put it down next to the key and heard the little click on the wood.

"What are you doing?" Stanton said.

"You told me this morning to apologize or not come home. I read it twice."

"I didn't mean it that way!"

"You wrote it that way."

Bernadette stood up.

"You are making a serious mistake," she said. "Everything you're wearing, I bought. Everything in that bag came out of my pocket. You go out that door and you go with nothing."

"I know," I said. "That's what I've been told for six years."

I picked up the duffel by its straps.

"The card," Bernadette said sharply. "Leave the card."

"I don't have it. You took it back at the airport."

I walked down the hall past the family photos, where I was in none of them.

Stanton called my name once from the kitchen.

He did not follow me.

I opened the front door and stood on the porch in the cold.

I had forty dollars in my wallet, one bag, and a phone at nine percent.

I scrolled to the only number I trusted and pressed it.

It rang once.

"Dot's," said a rough voice. "Where are you?"

"Dot, I left."

"Good," Dot said. "Come now. The room's made up. It's been made up for seven years."

I started to cry, finally, standing on the sidewalk.

"And honey," Dot said, in a different voice. "Before you get here. The bank has been calling me about you for a year."

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