Page 37 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“So you’ll unfreeze the accounts,” I say. “And text me the new password. That’s what’s fair and good, and I know you’re a good man.”

He frowns in a way that shows genuine pain. “I’m a good man, and you’re a good woman. So stay.”

I sigh. “It’s gonna be okay. We can get through this together. Just text me the new passwords.”

I pick up my bag and I walk out through the bedroom and down the hall and through the foyer and out the front door.

Jake is still standing in the hallway when I leave the house.

I drive to the Starbucks at the edge of the neighborhood and park in the lot. It’s familiar from a hundred mornings I’ve parked here, scrolling through emails and planning my day before I go in for a long work session.

It’s ordinary. That’s the point. I drove here because ordinary felt possible for approximately thirty seconds.

I text Jake.

[LENNON: I need the password to the accounts. Please.]

I wait.

The three dots don’t appear.

I text again.

And again.

The thread stacks up, my words going out into silence, and I watch the space under each one whereDeliveredshould appear…stop appearing.

My eyes go wide as it sinks in what that means. The thing about phones is they don’t tell you when you’ve been blocked.

They just stop delivering. And as the messages just sit there, undelivered, like they’re still traveling and maybe they’ll arrive eventually if I’m patient enough.

Because there’s no way he would block me.

Not while he’s cut off all my money.

I call.

One ring.

It goes to voicemail.

I call again.

One ring.

And then it dawns.

Oh my God.

He blocked me.

He froze every account and told me to come home and asked me to stay celibate for a year and then he blocked me.

I put the phone on the passenger seat.

I look at the Starbucks. At the ordinary Tuesday afternoon of people going in and coming out with cups, living their ordinary lives, unaware that a woman who is sitting in a car in this parking lot has just understood something deep about her marriage that she probably should have understood years ago.

The sound that comes out of me is not dignified.