Four People, Four Tickets, They Treated Me Like a Shadow, So I Left Them Behind novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Four Seats
At the airline counter Freya is told there is no later flight for her to Rome; she cancels all four tickets on her phone, and a man behind her says, 'Hello, Bernadette.'
At ten past five on a Tuesday morning, I stood at the airline counter holding four passports that weren't mine.
My mother-in-law had handed them to me in the parking ramp.
"You're so good at this, Freya," Bernadette had said, and walked ahead with her coat over her arm.
Now she stood beside me in her good pearls, and my sister-in-law walked backward in front of us with her phone held up.
My husband rolled two suitcases to a stop. Her boyfriend carried nothing at all.
"Four to Rome, business class," the agent said. "Lovely. Is anyone else traveling on this booking?"
"Just the four of us," Bernadette said.
I looked at my husband, Stanton.
Stanton looked at the baggage belt behind the agent.
"You said a later flight," I said. "Next week. You said you'd book mine."
"I'll book it from Rome, babe." He touched my elbow. "Promise. Mom just wants the first days to be family."
I had heard him say that for nine days. Every time, he'd said it gently, and every time I had let it be gentle.
"I can check for a seat next week, ma'am," the agent said to me. "I'd need a form of payment."
"She doesn't need one," Bernadette said.
She slid a black card across the counter for the bag fees, without looking at it.
My name was printed on the front. FREYA TELLER, in raised silver letters.
Bernadette had carried that card since the week of my wedding.
"The bank puts your name on mine, dear," she'd told me once. "I added you as a courtesy."
I had used it a week ago to book all four seats, because she asked me to.
She had taken it back before I finished.
"Freya," she said now. Her voice was soft, the voice she used at church. "Be realistic, sweetheart."
"About what?"
"You'd be in the back of every photo. We'd spend the whole trip cropping you out. This way everyone's pictures turn out."
Brittany laughed and swung the phone toward me.
"Say bye to the shadow, everybody," she said. "She's staying home with the dishes."
"Mom," Stanton said.
That was all he said. It was what he always said, and it never changed anything.
Brittany kept filming. Her boyfriend looked at his shoes.
I stood there with four passports in my hand and thought about what I was.
I was twenty-nine, and I made nineteen dollars an hour at a vet clinic.
I was allowed forty dollars a week of it.
Bernadette managed the rest, so I wouldn't have to worry.
I lived in her house, and I washed her dishes.
I knew everyone's seat preference, because I had booked them. Bernadette took the aisle. Brittany needed the window.
Nobody had ever asked what I wanted to see in Rome.
So I stepped out of the line.
I walked to the end of the counter, where the stanchion belt turned, and took out my phone.
My email was on the reservation. It was the only thing on that booking that was mine.
I opened the airline app and tapped the trip.
It showed four names, four seats and a total of $11,860.
I pressed Cancel Entire Trip.
The app asked if I was sure.
My thumb did not shake. I pressed Yes.
Behind me, the agent's screen chimed.
"Oh," she said. She frowned and tapped her keyboard. "Ma'am, I'm sorry. This reservation was just cancelled."
"By who?" Bernadette said.
"By the booking holder. The refund goes back to the card it was paid with."
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Bernadette turned her head toward me, very slowly.
"Put it back," she said. The church voice was gone. "Right now, Freya."
"Babe, you don't mean this," Stanton said. "Come on. We'll talk in the car."
Brittany's phone had come down to her waist. Then it went back up, higher than before.
I held out the four passports.
"You booked four seats," I said. "I just booked none."
Bernadette didn't take them.
Her hand was shaking, and for the first time in six years she wasn't looking at me.
She was looking over my shoulder.
"Hello, Bernadette," a man said behind me.
He was the last person in the line. He wore a canvas jacket and carried a duffel bag, and I realized he had been standing there for the whole thing.
Bernadette's face went the color of paper.
"Keir?" Stanton said.
In six years of marriage, I had never once heard my husband say that name.
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