Page 133 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Jake taught us both to doubt ourselves.

He made one mistake.

He put us in the same story, and now neither of us has to stand against him alone.

A female officer steps out of the second cruiser.

She’s shorter than her partner, with her dark hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head. She keeps one hand low nearher flashlight, and her eyes dart back and forth over the scene, taking in Jake on his knees. August. My bare muddy legs. Then the truck, including the broken gas hose still sticking out of the gas tank, which I note her eyes stopping on. Also the airbag sagging through the passenger window.

Then she looks at me. Really looks, and not through me, or around me toward the man explaining how confused I am, butat me.

“What’s your name?” she calls.

“Lennon Gallagher.”

My married name tastes like rust.

Jake twists toward her. “Officer, that’s my wife. I was trying to get her away from my brother. He’s unstable. He’s been stalking us and this isn’t the first time he’s attacked me. I had to call the cops on him just a few weeks ago!”

The female officer doesn’t look away from me.

“Lennon,” she says, “are you injured?”

“Yes,” I say. “And I’ve been poisoned.”

Jake lets out a soft, devastated laugh. “Baby.”

Not loud. Not cruel.

That’s the thing about him. He never starts cruel when other people can hear. He starts gentle. Concerned. Patient enough to make my panic look like proof.

“Listen to yourself,” he says. “You need to rest and see a doctor about your head wound. You’re not making sense.”

For ten years, I have lived inside the story he tells best.

Lennon is tired.

Lennon is emotional.

Lennon gets migraines.

Lennon isn’t thinking clearly.

Lennon needs me.

And here we are again, in the mud and the dark, with police lights cutting my face into red and blue pieces while my husband tries to hand the world another version of me.

The old, panicky urge to make myself easier to believe rises in me. Maybe if I lower my voice or try to explain more calmly, I canproveI deserve to be heard. I just have to come across less furious.

Except for the fact that Iamfurious. I’mpissed.

I am bloody and poisoned and standing in a ditch because I had to crash a truck to keep my husband from kidnapping me.

If that’s too much for the room, frankly, then the room can fucking choke on it.

“My husband has been poisoning my coffee with contaminated coin polish,” I say, louder. “My brother-in-law was taking me to a hospital when Jake tracked us down, stole August’s truck, kidnapped me, and tried to drive away with me in it.”

The male officer gives the female officer a look.