He sat in the room. It was not his room. It was a room in the apartment his brother occupied.
His brother, Paul, had said;
“I don’t own this place. I once almost owned half a house but my brother cheated me out of it.”
Vin had searched for words, but before he found them, Paul added;
“Yeah, I’ll take you in. Sure. You’re my brother. Relationships mean something to me.”
Vin swallowed, he needed to speak, but Paul wasn’t pausing as he led him to a small messy side room.
“You stay in this room. Me and my girl live in the house. You don’t take our food, use our things. Okay? You just stay in there unless I invite you into the rest of the house. You can understand that?”
Vin had looked at his brother, trying to make contact with his soul, but that was not possible. Paul viewed him with triumph and contempt.
Where Vin was overweight, Paul was thin. Where Vin was not handsome, Paul was. Having grown with Paul, Vin knew that he could be cruel.
Paul paraded out of the room, shutting the door, as if it were a cell. Vin sat on the bed in the small dark room, dimly hearing Paul and his girlfriend in the living room.
How did it happen? Vin asked himself.
How did he lose everything? His wife, his home, how?
It was five years ago.
Paul had been married to Fiona then. They’d gone abroad. Vin had been alone. Then he met Marcy. She seemed so young and simple and good and decent. They got involved, Marcy got pregnant, he married her.
He married Marcy and got Grandma to sell him the house.
Grandma had promised to leave the house to him and Paul when she died. It was in her Will, she often said. But Vin got Grandma to sell him the house. To sell the house to him and his wife as a legacy for the baby.
Vin wasn’t worried about Paul. He didn’t even think of him. After all, Paul was thousands of miles away, his wife had money, he might never come back.
But Paul did come back. Paul came back when his wife discarded him.
Paul arrived at the house, thinking it was half his. Paul returned to find Vin and Marcy and Stacy living in the house. Filling the house. When he mentioned that half of the place was his; he was told; he had no part of the house.
Paul stood gaping, feeling raped.
How could Vin do this? How could he buy the house Grandma would have left to them, so that Paul got nothing!
Nothing!
Paul had sat in a small room in what he had thought was his house, and couldn’t understand what happened.
His life had seemed so sweet and easy. He had married Fiona, and began working on her citizenship papers. Once she had taken the oath, gotten the passport, carried him to her country.
They spent a lovely time.
As the plane which returned them to America landed, as they cleared customs and came onto the pavement Fiona summoned a cab.
“Just the red suitcases...” she told the porter, and when Paul went to speak, Fiona sharply told him;
“You take your own cab. Our relationship is over.”