Page 1 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

ONE

LENNON

“I want a divorce.”

My words land in the room like a dropped glass. I guess I’ve always thought there was a script to life, rules, you might say, and if you stuck closely enough to them, no harm should befall you.

Today, I’m going off script.

Jake’s eyes shoot up from his phone.

“What?”

“I want a divorce,” I say again, and the second time, it comes out steadier, even though my heartbeat has officially rocketed into a throbbing cacophony in my ears.

“What are you talking about, Lennon?” Jake half-laughs like I’ve said something absurd. “We just bought a house.”

“I know.”

“We just—” He sets the phone down. Looks at me. “We’ve been working toward this future for nine years. I just got a promotion at work.”

“I know.”

“Everyone in our friend group—at church?—”

“I know.”

He’s going to make me say the words, which is fair. The words are the thing I have been swallowing for so long I’d almost convinced myself I didn’t mean them.

“I’m not happy,” I say. “I haven’t been for a long time. And I don’t know how to make that different.”

The script said love, marriage, and a baby in a baby carriage. I guess it never promised happiness, but it turned out the babies weren’t in the cards for me, either, and lately, I’ve been wondering about the love part, too. Was it ever there? Or did I just think it was, right at the very beginning, before I was old enough to know better?

“You’re not—” Jake stops. Then starts again, softer. “Lennon. You’ve just got another one of your migraines.”

“I do.” It’s the ice-pick kind, stabbing behind my left orbital socket in an unrelenting way. But I always have migraines these days, don’t I? So what’s the point of waiting for a migraine-free day to leave my husband?

“So you’re not thinking straight. That’s?—”

“Jake.”

“—that’s all this is. You’re in pain and you’re not?—”

“I am thinking straight.” Something in my chest pulls tight. “I know what I’m saying.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, hands together, massaging a balled fist. Then he stands up from the couch and paces away from me, toward the window and the white picket fence visible through it.

A literal white picket fence. And I watch the set of his shoulders change. When he turns back, his eyes are sheened with tears.

This is the part that usually undoes me.

Jake doesn’t cry. He didn’t cry at his grandmother’s funeral. His dad died not long before we met, but I never saw him shed a tear over it.

He’s a man for whom most feelings seem to arrive already translated into something manageable and practical. Something he can fix.

So tears don’t come easily to him.

And when they do, they mean something. They mean he cares deeply and is truly hurting.