Chapter 5 - The Hotel Nightmare
By 8:00 p.m. that evening, Nathan Whitmore was living in an entirely new reality.
He was sitting on the edge of a king-sized bed in a mid-range hotel near O'Hare Airport, three miles from the highway.
The room was utter chaos.
Mason was jumping up and down on the secondary mattress, screaming at the television. Tyler had spilled a cup of chocolate milk across the carpet, turning the beige fibers into a sticky, dark stain. Little Noah was screaming incessantly in his crib because Margaret had bought the wrong brand of cheap formula, causing the toddler severe stomach cramps.
"Nathan!" Margaret yelled over the sound of the crying toddler, her voice hoarse and raw. "Do something! Change his diaper! My back is killing me!"
Nathan sat with his head in his hands, his pristine Tom Ford suit rumpled, his silk tie undone. "Mom, I don't know how to change a diaper! Emily always handled those things when Bradley visited!"
"Well, Emily isn't here, is she?!" Margaret snapped bitterly, tossing a dirty towel onto the floor. "She’s sitting in some fancy hotel room spending your money! I told you years ago that girl had cold blood! I told you she was too independent! You should have married a nice girl from Peoria who knew how to respect a family!"
"Shut up, Mom!" Nathan suddenly screamed, snapping his head up, his eyes bloodshot and wild. "Just shut up for five minutes!"
Margaret froze, looking at her eldest son in total shock. "How dare you speak to your mother like that?!"
"I am paying three hundred dollars a night for this room!" Nathan roared, standing up, his chest heaving. "My corporate credit cards were declined at the front desk because Emily’s attorney froze our joint line! I had to use my personal emergency card! I have six hundred dollars left on my limit, three screaming kids, and a court hearing in ten hours!"
At that moment, his phone rang.
Nathan grabbed it off the nightstand, hoping it was his lawyer offering good news.
It was his younger brother, Bradley.
"Hey, Nate," Bradley’s slurred, relaxed voice came through the speaker. He was sitting in a sports bar in Peoria, the sound of loud music and clinking beer glasses echoing in the background. "Did Mom and the boys make it to your place alright? Thanks again for taking them, man. Jenna’s boyfriend is being a real jerk about the kids staying in Ohio, so this really saves my neck."
Nathan gripped the phone so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Bradley," Nathan whispered, his voice trembling with rage. "Where are you?"
"Oh, just grabbing a beer with some guys from the job site," Bradley said casually. "Hey, listen, can you wire me two hundred bucks? I need to get my truck fixed tomorrow morning."
Nathan let out a guttural, terrifying roar of frustration.
"You lazy, worthless piece of trash!" Nathan screamed into the phone, losing complete control of his mind. "My wife left me! My bank accounts are frozen! I am sitting in a cheap hotel near O'Hare with your three screaming kids while you are drinking beer in a bar?!"
Silence came over the other end of the line.
"Whoa, Nate," Bradley said, his tone turning defensive and surly. "Calm down, man. You’re the oldest brother. You’re the one making two hundred grand a year in Chicago. You said you’d take care of it!"
"Come get your kids, Bradley!" Nathan yelled. "Come get them right now, or I swear to God I will call Child Protective Services and drop them off at the state station!"
"If you do that, I'll tell Mom!" Bradley barked back.
"I don't give a damn about Mom!" Nathan roared.
He slammed the phone down onto the nightstand so hard the glass screen shattered into a hundred webbed cracks.
May you like
In the corner of the room, Mason stopped jumping on the bed. Tyler stopped crying. Little Noah went quiet, staring at his uncle with wide, terrified eyes.
Margaret sat on the edge of the sofa, looking at her golden son—the man she had built up as the invincible savior of the Whitmore family—collapsing into a puddle of weeping, pathetic ruin on the floor.
