Page 29 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Except worse… maybe like a crazy stalker or something.

“I live here,” I reiterate. “I’ve lived here two years. I didn’t know who you were.”

My mother makes a sound. Not a word, exactly, more just like the audible version of contempt and vindication. She’s been waiting for her suspicions to be confirmed and she feels like she’s just watched it happen in real time.

“Of course,” she snaps. “Of course you’re here. Of course this is where you are.”

“Mom—” I drag a tired hand down my face.

“No.” She steps fully into the doorway, making Marie stumble backwards.

Shit, Mom’sinsidethe cabin now, which is not where I want her. I’m betting it’s the last place Marie wants her, too.

Marie—shit, no,Lennon—Jake’swife.

Fuck. I can’t think about that right now.

“No, you don’t get toMomme.” Mom shakes her finger in my face. “Not after this. Do you have any idea?—”

She turns the finger Lennon’s way, and the pivot is so sharp it’s almost military. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What thetwoof you have done?”

“It’s not what you think,” Lennon starts.

“It’s exactly what I think.” My mother’s voice drops to something that’s quieter. Oh shit. The woman has two registers: loud, which is bad, and quiet, which is generally much worse for whoever’s on the other end of her ire.

“I can see exactly what happened. You leave my son—mygoodson, who has given you everything and worked himself to the bone for you—and you come straight here. Tohim.The two of you have probably been carrying on for God knows how long behind Jake’s back?—”

“No!” Lennon objects. “I just met him last night and I didn’t know he was?—”

“Oh please, you expect me to believe that?” My mother cuts across her. “How long has this been going on? Months?Years? Did you decide to destroy your marriage so you could run away withhim?—”

Her scoff at the thought of someone running away with me to get away from my brother isn’t what has me stepping forward.

“That’s enough,” I say.

“I’m speaking toher?—”

“I know you are.” I step between my mother and Lennon. Not touching either of them. Just making myself a barrier. I’m used to my mother treating me like shit. But the way she’s speaking to Lennon is unacceptable. “And now you’re going to stop.”

My mother looks at me the way she has always looked at me, which is like I’m a problem she was unfairly handed by life.

“You,” she says, and the single word carries about twenty years of accumulated verdict in it. “You have never been able to juststay out of it.Have you? Your brother finally has something good and you just can’t stand it?—”

“From what I understand,” I say, fighting to stay calm and collected, always especially difficult around my mother, “Jake’s marriage was over before I ever met Lennon. I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“I met him last night for the first time,” Lennon reiterates from behind me. Her voice has steadied. “AfterI left Jake. That’s the truth.”

My mother looks at her with an expression that makes it very clear she does not believe this and finds the attempt insulting.

“You are exactly,” she says to Lennon, with a precision that suggests she’s been saving this up, “what I always knew you were. With a white trash mother like yours.” She shakes her head. “I told Jake. Itoldhim from the beginning that you were?—”

“Don’t,” I say.

“—exactly the kind of woman who would do exactly this kind of thing. Selfish. Unstable. No regard for the people who love you?—”

“I saiddon’t.”

“And you.” Mom’s laser gaze shoots back to me. She’s always had a way of generously distributing her contempt, especially when directed at my father, when he was alive, or me now that he’s gone. Her voice lowers with venomous contempt. “You have always hated your brother. From the time you were boys. You resented him and I never understood why, because he has never been anything but?—”