Excluded and Uninvited novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Homewrecker, Returned

I gave Brandy the microphone.

I did it because I wanted to see what she would do with it.

She stood in the white light, and two thousand people stared at her, and her hand shook once.

Then she took a breath and turned to face them.

"It's true," she said.

Her voice carried to the back wall.

"All of it. The script is real. I wrote the breakup part. I sat in a car and bet him that Caleb wouldn't make it to the end of the alley."

A man at the back said something ugly.

She flinched but she kept going.

"I'm pregnant," she said. "I told Caleb it was his. It isn't. It's Greg's, and it has been the whole time."

The sound the room made was not a gasp.

It was lower, and it went on for a long time.

"Brandy," Greg said.

"Don't." She did not look at him. "You blocked me for a week. You let your assistant call me a liability."

"Brandy, stop."

"I wanted the numbers too," she said. "That's the truth. I wanted my face on your channel, and I didn't care who it cost."

In the third row, a woman stood up with her phone held out in front of her.

"Homewrecker!" she shouted.

The word cracked across the hall.

It was the same word they had put on Katja's cabin.

It landed on Brandy now with both hands.

She turned, white-faced, and found me in the light.

"Cal," she said. "I'm so sorry. Please take me back. I'll do anything. I have no one."

She held the microphone in both hands.

I took it gently.

Everybody in the building leaned in.

"No, Brandy," I said, as plainly as I had said it at the gate.

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