They Left Me Out of the Family Pack Chat, So I Left Them Out of My Future novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: The Blue Folder
I took my brother up to my kitchen and sat him at the table where Roz had sat with my laptop.
Quinn came up behind us with a toolbox.
"Door chain," he said, to nobody. "It's been loose a month."
I'd never noticed it was loose.
He set to work on the frame, and he didn't leave.
Ewan put the wine on the table and didn't open it.
He looked about twelve years old.
"Okay," he said. "Dad's in the chat right now, and I'm in it too, and I wanted you to hear it from me."
"Hear what?"
He held out his phone.
I read it standing up.
"She's having a breakdown," my father had written. "We say it gently, to everyone, so nobody takes anything she says seriously. Imo has been under a lot of stress at the hospital."
My mother answered at once.
"Poor baby. I'll call her aunt in the morning."
I don't have an aunt who would care.
"I'll handle the in-laws," Roz wrote. "Leave it with me. I'll say she's been struggling and we're worried."
Ewan had typed one line under it and deleted it.
I could see where it had been, a gray ghost.
"What did you type?" I said.
"That it wasn't true." He swallowed. "Then I deleted it."
"Why?"
"Because it's Dad. And Roz. And it's always been like that." He rubbed his face. "Imo, you don't know how it works. You weren't in the room."
"I was never in the room. That's the name of the group."
He flinched.
Behind me, the screwdriver stopped.
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