Chapter 2 - The Screaming on the Line
Lucas didn't answer immediately. He let the echo of his mother’s shrieking bounce around the interior of the car, his face carved out of stone.
“Lucas!” Betsy screamed louder, background noise rustling over the line—the distinct sound of wind and security guards speaking calmly in the background. “Answer me right now! Some arrogant security guard just walked into the living room while Pamela was editing her videos and told us we have twenty minutes to vacate the premises! He claimed Naomi canceled the reservation!”
“She did,” Lucas said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
Silence fell over the other end of the line for a split second, followed by a sharp gasp from Pamela in the background.
“Are you insane?!” Betsy shrieked. “I am your mother! Pamela is your sister! You allowed that woman to kick us out of a lakefront villa like common vagrants?! Tell her to pick up the phone right now and undo this!”
“Naomi is sitting right beside me,” Lucas said smoothly. “And she isn't undoing anything. Neither am I.”
“Lucas Michael Hale!” Betsy roared. “I demand you get back here this instant and fix this! Furthermore, my credit card was just declined at the concierge desk when I tried to pay for our luggage transfer! The front desk said the card was frozen for fraud! Fix it immediately! We are stranded on the porch with six suitcases!”
Lucas leaned closer to the microphone.
“It wasn't frozen for fraud, Mom,” he said, every word dripping with cold precision. “I froze it.”
Another pause on the line.
“You... you did what?” Betsy’s voice lost a fraction of its shrill volume, replaced by a sudden, sharp edge of hesitation.
“I froze the card,” Lucas repeated. “And while I was doing it, I spent the last fifteen minutes looking at five years of account statements.”
In the backseat, my parents sat in total silence, listening to the conversation. My mother reached out and squeezed my shoulder, her eyes wide.
“Lucas, darling,” Betsy’s tone shifted rapidly, moving from explosive outrage to a hurried, sweet defensiveness. “You know that card is for my living expenses. You gave it to me so I wouldn't have to worry about emergencies—”
“A twelve-thousand-dollar diamond tennis bracelet isn't an emergency, Mom!” Lucas suddenly shouted, slamming his hand against the steering wheel. The sudden explosion of his voice made even Betsy go dead silent over the phone. “A four-thousand-dollar shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue isn't an emergency! Paying for Pamela’s hair extensions and luxury flights for five years isn't an emergency!”
“Lucas, listen to me—”
“No, Mom! You listen to me!” Lucas’s chest heaved as he poured out five years of buried resentment. “For seven years, you have treated my wife like she was an intruder in my life. You talked down to her, you took credit for her success, and today, you kicked her parents’ luggage and called them dumpster trash! You stood in a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar vacation house that Naomi paid for with her hard work, and you tried to throw her out!”
“She’s turning you against your own blood!” Pamela’s voice screeched from somewhere in the background. “Lucas, she’s manipulating you!”
“Shut up, Pamela!” Lucas yelled back. “You are thirty-seven years old! You spend your entire life pretending to be a wealthy travel influencer on the internet, and you’ve been doing it on my wife’s dime! Neither of you has earned a single cent of the money you’ve been throwing around!”
“Lucas!” Betsy wept, her voice turning fake and hysterical. “How can you speak to your family like this?! After everything I sacrificed to raise you!”
“You spent three hundred and forty-two thousand dollars of my personal money over five years, Betsy,” Lucas said, dropping his tone back into a icy, lethal register. “And as of five minutes ago, I have transferred the remaining balance out of that account. The card is permanently canceled.”
“You can’t leave us here!” Betsy panicked, real, unscripted terror finally bleeding into her voice. “We don’t have a car! The car service was canceled! How are we supposed to get back to the city?!”
“I suggest you use your own money to call an Uber,” Lucas said. “Assuming you have any money of your own left.”
“Lucas, don’t you dare hang up on me—!”
Lucas pressed the red button on his steering wheel. The call ended instantly.
He dropped his hands from the wheel, breathing heavily, staring at the blank dashboard screen.
From the backseat, my father cleared his throat softly. He leaned forward, resting his heavy, calloused hand on Lucas’s shoulder.
“Son,” my father said quietly. “That took a lot of courage.”
May you like
Lucas turned around, looking at my dad with tears swelling in his eyes. “I’m sorry it took me five years to do it, Walter.”
“Better late than never,” my father smiled gently. “Now... how far is this Key West place?”
