Page 53 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

I hearhim before I see him.

Jake’s voice cuts through the thin wall of my RV, and the sound of it activates my nervous system in a way that’s older and more animal than fear. More like something that lives below the ribcage.

I stay on my couch.

Lennon’s got this. She doesn’t need me stomping out there like some sort of caveman.

My sketchpad is open on my knee and I’m not drawing, just holding the pencil and listening to the rhythm of what I can’t quite make out through the wall.

Lennon has been competently handling things her entire life without me and she doesn’t need me walking out there and becoming the headline, which is what happens when Jake and I end up in the same space.

So I stay on my couch.

I hear her voice through the wall, careful as she tries to cut off my brother’s insidious version of being reasonable:I’m not doing this.

His voice, softer than hers, which is the whole move I know so well:I’m just trying to understand?—

I am gripping the pencil hard enough that my knuckles have gone pale.

I’m still not going out there.

Her voice, tighter:You froze my accounts and you blocked my number?—

His voice, patient, almost sorrowful:You’re raising your voice.

Her voice:I am not?—

His voice:Lennon. Listen to yourself.

I stand up.

Fuck.

I sit back down.

Listen to yourself.The oldest move in the playbook. Not Jake’s originally. It was our mother’s, which Jake absorbed so thoroughly I don’t think he knows anymore that he’s running it.

I spent eighteen years on the receiving end.Listen to yourself, August. Do you hear how you sound? This is what we mean about you.You’re unstable.

It was the careful persistent replacement of my own perception with theirs until I couldn’t separate out what was true or not anymore.

The hell of it is, sometimes I still feel like I can’t trust myself.

I know exactly what that kind of mindfuck does to a person.

The pencil snaps.

I look at the two pieces in my hand, then set them on the cushion.

Two seconds later, I’m out the door.

Cold air hits me and I take in the plaza in one sweep.

Jake is standing close to Lennon. Not touching her, but he learned early that the most effective pressure doesn’t require contact. Another thing he learned from our mother—just getting inside someone’s space with the practiced way of making proximity feel inescapable.

Raven stands in their doorway with their arms crossed and an expression I would not want directed at me. Ricky’s truck is at the far end of the lot with the engine idling.

Lennon sees me first.