“So you’re really choosing a cabin over your brother?”
I looked at him.
“I’m choosing the word no.
The cabin is just where you finally forced me to prove I meant it.”
He looked away.
They carried the air mattresses to Dad’s truck first.
Then the unopened welcome baskets.
Then the extra towels.
Eric made three trips without speaking to me.
Before he left, he removed the copied key from the hook beside the door and dropped it onto the counter.
For a second, I thought that would be the end of it.
Then Dad noticed the small security camera near the porch again.
“You recorded all of us?”
“The camera records anyone who comes to my door.
You knew it was there.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Delete it.”
“No.”
He stared at me with the expression he’d used when I was seventeen and had missed curfew.
But I wasn’t seventeen.
This wasn’t his house.
And he had no punishment left that could make me hand over the keys.
He walked out.
After their truck disappeared down the road, I locked the door behind them using the temporary lock I’d arranged to have installed.
The copied key they had made no longer opened anything.
Then I sat alone at my kitchen table.
Only then did my hands begin to shake.
Staying calm hadn’t meant I wasn’t furious.
It meant I had finally learned that anger was most useful when it didn’t choose my next move for me.
I hadn’t needed to scream louder than Dad.
I needed records.
Dates.
Screenshots.
The camera footage.
And, most importantly, their own words.
Over the next several days, the six reservations disappeared from Eric’s listing as the unauthorized property issue was processed.
Whatever plans he had made around the expected rental income collapsed with them.
He called me repeatedly.
I didn’t answer the first five times.
On the sixth, I did.
“What?”
His voice was different.
No grin behind it now.
“They want more information from me.”
“Then give them accurate information.”
“They’re asking whether I own the property.”
“You don’t.”
“I know that.”
“Then this should be easy.”
He was silent.
Finally he said, “Can you tell them I had permission?”
“No.”
“You could fix this in thirty seconds.”
“By lying.”
“By helping your brother.”
I closed my eyes.
