Four People, Four Tickets, They Treated Me Like a Shadow, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Brother

Keir, Stanton's half-brother, tells Freya in the hall that he sent two letters to her house, while Brittany's video of the scene goes up; Stanton texts her to apologize or not come home, and Keir tells her to ask the bank who the primary holder is.

"Security," Bernadette said.

She didn't say it to anyone in particular.

She said it to the whole terminal, and her voice cracked in the middle.

The man in the canvas jacket did not move.

"I'm not here for you," he said. "I'm here for her."

He looked at me when he said it.

"Who is this?" I asked Stanton.

"Nobody." Stanton had gone pink to the ears. "He's not part of this. Mom, it's fine."

"He took money from Dad's estate," Brittany said. She had the phone up again. "Tell the camera your name, Keir. Go ahead."

"Keir Orwell," he said, without looking at her. "Your father's oldest son. Your brother, Brittany, for what that's worth."

"Half brother," Bernadette said. "We don't discuss him."

A police officer was already walking over from the kiosk, a thick man with a radio on his shoulder.

"Everything okay here, folks?"

"This man is harassing my family," Bernadette said.

"I haven't said anything to her," Keir said. "I'm going to leave. I'd like two minutes with Mrs. Orwell's daughter-in-law first, at the elevators, in plain view of you."

The officer looked at me.

"Ma'am?"

I had been standing at that counter for ten minutes holding the passports of people who had just laughed at me.

I did not know this man.

But he was the only person in that terminal who had looked straight at me.

"Two minutes," I said.

"Freya," Stanton said. "Do not."

"You can tell me about it in the car," I said. "Oh, wait. You can't. I'm not in it."

Brittany gasped, delighted, and her phone followed me across the floor.

Keir walked me twenty feet to the elevators and stopped where the officer could see us.

Up close, he was older than Stanton, and tired from a long flight.

"I'm sorry about all of that," he said. "I'd planned to do this differently."

"Do what?"

"Two years ago I sent you a letter. Then I sent another one three months later. Both went to the house on Fairmont."

I thought about the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

Bernadette collected the mail every day at noon, in her gardening gloves.

She said I shouldn't be bothered with junk.

"I never got a letter," I said.

"No," he said. "I didn't think so."

"What did they say?"

"That I knew your father's name. And that you should call your bank and ask about your account."

"I don't have an account. I'm on Bernadette's."

He didn't argue. He just waited, and that was worse.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

It was a video my sister-in-law had posted four minutes ago.

The caption read: *When your DIL tries to ruin Mom's 61st and ends up cancelling her own ride. Pray for us.*

It already had six thousand views.

The first comment, from a stranger, said: *Wait, they didn't buy her a ticket?? They all went except her??*

The second said: *Why is the husband just standing there.*

I watched the numbers climb as I stood by the elevators.

Another buzz. This time it was Stanton.

*Mom is humiliated. Come home and apologize to her by tonight or don't come home. I mean it, Freya. I'm done being the only reasonable one.*

I read it twice.

Then I looked back across the terminal.

The four of them were still at the counter.

Bernadette was talking to the agent with her hand flat on the glass.

Stanton was typing on his phone. Brittany was still filming.

None of them was looking at me.

None of them had ever needed to.

"Keir," I said. It was the first time I had said his name. "Why did you write to me?"

"Because I watched what she did to my father," he said. "And I didn't want to watch it twice."

The officer cleared his throat across the floor. Our two minutes were up.

Keir picked up his duffel.

"I'll give you the short version," he said. "The card she carries. The one with your name on it. You should ask the bank who the primary holder is."

"Bernadette's," I said. "I told you. She added me as a courtesy."

"Ask anyway," he said.

He nodded once to the officer and walked toward the doors.

Cold air came in from the street when they opened.

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