Page 40 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Hands off.

Somewhat desperately, she nods at the duffel. “Going somewhere?”

“Coming back,” I say, equally awkwardly, considering where my thoughts just went.

Then we both just stand there, staring at each other.

I don’t elaborate and she doesn’t push. I set the duffel down because it’s heavy and because I’m apparently staying for a minute.

“Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have stopped,” I say, immediately second-guessing the action. “I just saw you out here and—” I take a step back and reach for the duffel. “I don’t want to make things awkward.”

“No!” The word comes out with more heat than she probably intended because she quickly follows it up with, “No, it’s not— I mean.”

She breathes out hard and glances at the laptop. “I’m just trying to figure out how to divorce someone when they’ve locked you out of all your accounts including yourbusinessaccounts. Which apparently is something he can do because he set up my LLC, which felt fine at the time because I never imagined he would?—”

She stops and closes her eyes briefly. “Sorry. Is it weird for me to be talking about him? Because of the whole—” She makes a vague gesture that I understand to meanbecause of the whole him being your brother thing.

Because she’sJake’s wife, chimes in the voice in the back of my head at the reminder.Future ex-wife. Hands off.

But the rest of what she said is echoing louder.

“Wait, he didwhat?” I sit down on the lounger beside hers. “He shut you out of your business accounts?”

“Every account, really. Credit cards, bank, personal and business.” She ticks them off on her fingers with the efficiency of someone who has been through the list too many times in the past few days. “All of it. I’m locked completely out. The only money I have to my name is the cash in a tube sock I snatched when I went back for some of my things.”

That fucking manipulative bastard.

This is such a Jake move.

Really, it’s the Kathy special, but Jake learned at her knee, slurping it up like the good little mama’s boy he’s always been. The Kathy special: gut your opponent from beneath and behind, after you’ve lulled them into a sense of safety. As if it’s your right to control another person’s life so you can force them into the behavior of your choosing.

Diabolical as a mother going to the lengths Mom did to bring a “troubled” child to heel, but equally fucked when it’s a husband trying to control a woman who wants away from you.

“I always thought he was a bitch,” I say, and it comes out flat. “But goddamn.”

Lennon laughs, surprised. “Yeah.”

“Sorry. He’s still your?—”

“No more apologizing,” she says. “And I’d really rather not talk about Jake.”

“Fine by me.”

I can tell she means it. I sure mean it. We’re both quiet for another moment, that comfortable quiet that I didn’t expect from her the first night and have been thinking about, on and off, for two days in the margins of pancakes for dinner and dragon battles.

“So are you staying with your mom?” I ask, curious.

“No.” She waves a hand. “It’s too full in her RV with her and Patrick. Do you know Raven? She, sorry,they,said I could bunk with them for $250 a month. I was sold.” She laughs self-deprecatingly.

A gust of wind moves across the plaza and the sketchpad that I didn’t realize fell from the outer pocket of my duffel when I set it down flutters open, pages flying.

Lennon reaches for it before it can escape.

“Can I?” she asks, fingers hovering just above it. She’s already looking and her eyes have already gone wide with that expression of excited awe that any artist would be flattered by.

“Sure,” I manage, because what else do I say?

She picks it up.