They Left Me Out of the Family Pack Chat, So I Left Them Out of My Future novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Open Chat
Roz leaves WhatsApp open on Imogen's laptop and a group called No Imogen, No Drama pings. Imogen copies it, smiles, and answers her mother's request for money with a promise to bring it Sunday in person.
My cousin Roz used my laptop at my kitchen table and forgot to log out of WhatsApp.
She'd come over to print the seating chart for her wedding, all 140 names, and I was stirring risotto when she went to the bathroom.
I carried the laptop to the counter to close her tabs.
A message slid down the corner of the screen before I could.
The group was called "No Imogen, No Drama."
Unfortunately, I was Imogen.
I opened it.
There were four people in the group. My dad, my mom, my younger brother Ewan, and Roz.
On her screen my dad was saved as "Dad."
Roz had called him that since her own father died when she was nine, and I had never once minded.
The latest message was from him, sent two minutes earlier.
"Family dinner Sunday, 6 at the lake house. Imogen is NOT invited. She'll start in again about the 38k."
My mother had answered right under it.
"Agreed. Roz honey, keep her busy that weekend. Take her to a movie."
Ewan had written, "lol she'll send the next transfer by Friday anyway. She always does."
Three people had put a thumbs up on that.
I scrolled up with one finger.
The chat was four years old.
It started on Roz's twenty-seventh birthday, with a cake emoji and my mother's words: "Okay. Just us now."
Then came a long, ordinary stream of my family talking about me.
"Imo's check came, tell her thank you but not in front of me."
"Don't mention the car loan. She'll want to be thanked."
"She's too sensitive for the toast, put her on the guest book."
"The medicine story is still working. Her pill is forty dollars at the pharmacy and Imo sends six hundred."
The one from last March was from my dad.
"She bought the heart story. Roz, tell the venue the deposit is covered."
I had lent him thirty-eight thousand dollars in March.
He told me the procedure was scary and the copay was ugly and that he couldn't let Mom see the numbers.
I emptied my savings to do it and took a loan against my car.
On top of that I had sent my mother six hundred dollars on the first of every month for four years, for her medicine.
I sat down on the kitchen stool.
The risotto started to burn behind me, and I didn't turn it off.
The bathroom door opened.
"Ugh, I'm sorry, my phone died," Roz called. "Did you see the font on the table cards? Is it too much?"
She came in with her sleeves pushed up and her dark hair in a clip.
She stopped by the stove, turned the burner down, and gave the pot a stir.
"You're burning your dinner, Immy."
"Thanks."
"Sit, sit. I'll make you tea. You look wiped."
She filled the kettle and found my mug without asking.
"You know what Uncle Con said to me yesterday?" she said, with her back to me. "He said you're the glue. Your mom said the same. They'd be lost without you."
She turned around and put the tea in my hands.
It was warm and sweet and exactly how I like it.
I looked at her kind face and thought about the movie she was supposed to take me to.
My fingers were steady, which surprised me.
"They said you're all having dinner Sunday," I said.
"Oh." She didn't blink. "It's just the venue stuff. Boring. You'd hate it."
"I'd hate it."
"You would! Come see a movie with me instead. My treat."
I could have thrown the mug.
I could have held up the laptop and read the chat out loud to her.
She'd have cried, and she'd have apologized so smoothly that I'd have been the one comforting her by midnight.
So I smiled.
"I'd love that," I said.
She hugged me from the side, quick, her hair smelling like the lemon shampoo I'd bought her last Christmas.
Then she took her printed pages and left.
I locked the door behind her and went back to the laptop.
I selected the whole chat and sent it to my own email.
It took four minutes.
I logged her out, wiped the history from the browser, and closed the lid.
Then I turned off the stove and scraped the risotto into the trash.
I was done being the one who paid and never got told.
So I stepped out of the part they'd written for me, right there at my own stove.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
It was my mother, in our own private thread.
"Sweetheart, hope work was kind. Dad's follow-up is Friday and the second payment is due. Can you send the other $4,000? Love you so much. xo"
Minutes after she agreed to keep me busy, in a chat I'd never been allowed into.
I read it three times.
Then I wrote back with my thumbs moving slowly.
"Of course, Mom."
And then:
"I'll bring it Sunday. In person."
The three dots appeared and disappeared four times.
Nothing came.
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