Page 141 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Mayhem and Goblin enter our lives after another long session with the detectives working the case.

It was a nine-year marriage, and the DA wants a bulletproof timeline of every time Lennon became ill with symptoms of poisoning, especially during her pregnancies, so they can corroborate her recollections with her medical records.

The meetings take place in a conference room at the Hays County Government Center, where the air-conditioning blows too cold and the windows don’t open. The table is always covered in folders, photocopied calendars, hospital records, and photographs Lennon can barely stand to look at.

She sits across from the detective and tries to remember whether a particular migraine began before or after Easter eight years ago.

Whether Jake made dinner the night she collapsed in the bathroom.

Whether the metallic taste in her mouth appeared during the first pregnancy or only the second.

Questions no one should ever have to answer.

She has mostly recovered from the latest poisoning physically, though she still tires more easily than she used to. The sessions exhaust her in a different way.

By the time we leave that afternoon, she moves like someone who has been hollowed out.

The late sun strikes the pale stone of the government building hard enough to make me squint. Heat rises from the car park in shimmering waves, and the inside of my truck is an oven until the air-conditioning finally begins to push out something cooler.

Lennon buckles herself in without a word.

She turns toward the window as I drive away, watching San Marcos pass in a blur of traffic lights and sun-bleached shopfronts. Her fingers remain folded too neatly in her lap.

That’s how I know she’s not all right.

Lennon is not a still person when she’s content. She taps along to music. She points out dogs hanging their heads from car windows. She reaches across the console to touch me for no other reason than that I’m there.

Today, she stares through the glass.

So I drive a few miles up the road before turning off again.

She looks over when I slow.

“Do we need gas?” Her voice is hoarse from hours of talking. “Why are we stopping?”

“You’ll see.”

It’s all I say, following the directions I entered into the navigation before we left home.

She studies me, suspicious but too tired to interrogate me properly.

Then the sign comes into view.

SAN MARCOS REGIONAL ANIMAL SHELTER.

Everything about her changes.

Her back straightens. Her mouth parts. Even the color seems to return to her face.

“August,” she breathes.

Her hand whips across the console and closes around my forearm.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But what if Jake gets out of jail?” The brightness falters almost immediately, because even joy has to pass through the fear he left behind. “I’m only in the house temporarily. If we have to move back into the RV, there won’t be enough space for a kitty.”