Free Baggage Check by M.J. Pullen Page B

“That’s just the power lines or something. We heard it last night, too. The landlord says it’s normal.”
    â€œNormal,” Rebecca echoed. She thought there was still a question on Jake’s face, but he allowed his wife to lead him back to their room, and Rebecca nearly collapsed in humiliation and relief.
    She went back into her tiny cell and stared at the vibrating basket on the bookshelf, regretting ever taking the damn thing out of the bag. When the conversation seemed to have died down in the other rooms, she retrieved the vibrator and located the power button. She had not been imagining things after all. It didn’t work. So she pushed, cursing, on the battery panel until it came off its hinges with a snap of breaking plastic. Only then did she notice a tiny release lever on the bottom, now cracked from her efforts. Thankfully, she did not hear any reaction to the end of the buzzing in the other rooms.
    For a few minutes, she lay on the bottom bunk, tossing and turning as the house grew quiet around her. She checked her phone—it was 3:45, the time she normally had to get up on workdays, and she could feel her body’s energy rising as she lay there. Three years of training for early starts were overriding how tired she felt now. In a way, Rebecca wished she were going back to work today, instead of Tuesday. Between the obnoxiously happy couples flanking her tiny room and tonight’s humiliation, there seemed little to look forward to with sunrise and morning coffee.
    Rebecca flung the covers off, felt around on the sandy floor for her slippers, and padded to the light switch. It took her only a few minutes to pack and scrawl a note for her friends. “Work called—sorry—catch you guys later!” She sneaked past the sleeping Beth on the couch and was out the front door. She found a cab company on her smartphone and within half an hour, she was sitting in a relatively clean, coconut-scented backseat on the way to the airport. She called the Charleston flight desk and wheedled her way onto the standby list for a five-thirty flight to Atlanta, and then stared out the window at the inky black, dotted with yellow mercury streetlights. It was the same view she’d had on the drive to the beach house with Marci, two nights before.

 
    9
    Hours later, Rebecca was walking through the D terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, wondering what she would do with a couple of free days all to herself, when she remembered the call from her mother. She rode down the escalator and boarded the tram behind a group of teenagers in matching tracksuits before pulling out her phone to see if her mother had called again. She had not. A little surprising, but maybe, Rebecca told herself, the mistake had been cleared up. Maybe Daddy had called the power company and sorted things out. Or perhaps it had not been the power company but just a mortgage payment that got misdirected. Rebecca had heard a horrible news story about a family whose house had been foreclosed because the bank had been applying their loan payments to the wrong account. But surely this would not be the case? Daddy would definitely know. At least, as long as he had been able to disconnect himself from Sonia long enough to pay attention.
    â€œShe doesn’t need me,” Rebecca whispered. “She’s fine.”
    One of the tracksuit kids glanced up at Rebecca, who gave an embarrassed smile in return. She rode back to the main terminal in silence and wheeled her carry-on to the restroom, checking her makeup and washing her hands even though she had not used the stall. She looked in the mirror. “You are entitled to live your own life. Your family’s problems do not have to become yours.”
    But before she was even finished saying the words, she knew they were as hollow and empty as the industrial tile walls around her. She exited the bathroom, waited for the shuttle to her car, and waved her