Page 135 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Officer Treviño opens Instagram. Her thumbs move fast.

“What’s the account?”

I repeat the account details to her.

The clerk at the edge of the parking lot inches closer, still filming. The broken gas hose dangles from the pump behind him. A thin, chemical stink hangs over everything.

Officer Treviño finds the profile.

I know the exact second she sees the video because her face goes still.

“What am I looking at?” she asks.

“My kitchen,” I say. “From this morning.”

Jake makes a broken sound. “It’s a fake. One of those AI fakes!”

I don’t look at him.

I look at Officer Treviño.

Because this is the thing I never understood until this exact second: taking back my voice doesn’t mean convincing Jake to admit what he did.

It means turning away from him and speaking to someone else who can hear the truth and acknowledge reality. Of course August isn’t the only one.

“Play it,” I say.

Officer Treviño taps the screen.

The audio comes out tinny under the sirens and the alarm, but I still hear it.

The soft clink of cabinet hardware.

The faint rush of the air conditioner.

The scrape of the coffee canister sliding across the counter.

The camera angle is terrible because of how I had the phone set up. It catches the kitchen from the side: the coffee maker, the cabinet above it, and Jake from his nose down to his thigh as he moves into frame wearing the blue button-down I used to iron for him before church.

On the screen, he takes down the separate coffee canister.

The one labeled in his neat block letters: LENNON—LOW ACID.

A sound catches in August’s throat behind me.

Video Jake glances over his shoulder toward the hallway.

Then he opens the small metal tin I saw him using on the kitchen counter one day to scrub away at his old coin collection. The one with the half-peeled imported label and bright silver coins on the front. Is that how it happened the first time? Just an accident? But then he realized he could do it again, to his advantage, if I ever got out of line.

He uses a tiny spoon to spoon out the smallest amount. Barely anything.

That makes it worse.

The care of it. The precision. The way he taps the spoon once against the rim before stirring it through the grounds like he is sweetening a cup of tea.

Then he closes the canister.

Wipes the counter.