Page 52 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

He says something designed to set me off. He just says it in a super quiet voice.

Then pulls the:you’re raising your voice. You’re getting emotional. This is what I mean about you not being well.

I breathe.

“I’m not raising my voice,” I say, very, very quietly.

“Okay.” He holds his hands up. “Okay, if that’s how you feel.”

If that’s how you feel.

Not: you’re right, I was mistaken.

If that’s how you feel,like my perception of my own volume is afeelingI’m entitled to have rather than a fact.

“Jake.” I keep my voice low.

This is the game he’s forcing me to play even though all my hairs stand up on end at participating. “I want you to unfreeze my accounts. All of them. The personal ones and the business ones. And I want you to do it today. My lawyer will be in touch this week.”

Something shifts in his face. “You got a lawyer.”

“I did.”

He’s quiet for a moment. And then the reasonable, affable-guy-expression goes cold.

“I think this has gone far enough, Lennon. I came here to talk and you’re threatening me with lawyers. You’re clearly still not in a stable place?—”

“I’m extremely stable?—”

“—and frankly I’m worried about you. Being here, in this environment around people we don’t know, aroundhim—”and there it is, the word landing like the whole conversation was a path to this specific word— “I think it’s affecting your judgment?—”

“Do not,” I say.

“I’m concerned?—”

“Do not make this about August.”

“I’m not making it about August, I’m making it about you. I’m worried about?—”

“You don’t get to be worried about me anymore.” My voice has risen again.

I hear it and I can’t fully stop it because I have been standing here for ten minutes being methodically turned inside out by a man who has had ten years of practice doing just that.

“You froze my accounts and you blocked my number and now you’re standing here calling me unstable and saying me getting a lawyer is a threat when it’sclearlythe only recourse you’ve left me. Then you have the gall to tell me I’m shouting when I’mnot shouting?—”

“You’re shouting right now?—”

“I amnot—”I’m just speaking intensely at regular volume.

“Lennon.” His voice goes very quiet. Very sad. “Listen to yourself.”

The door to August’s RV opens and his head pops out. I see the moment his eyes zero in on Jake.

Oh no.

THIRTEEN

AUGUST