Page 89 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

There’s an explosion of glass as he busts through the curtain and out into Priscilla’s flower bed, and continues rolling until he comes to a stop on the lawn, arms and face bloody.

My mother is still screaming behind me.

Up and down the street, porch lights are flicking on, neighbors stepping out onto their lawns to see what the noise was.

And I understand, all at once, that the trap already closed around me. I was caught the second I walked through that door.

Rational thought just ends.

I push past Mom, throw the front door open, and run.

It barely registers that my own mother is screaming behind me: “He attacked us! He’s a maniac!” or that sirens are already rising somewhere close, way too close and way too fast for anyone to have called them just now.

Some small, stupid part of me thinks if I just keep running I can outrun the whole nightmare. Wake up somewhere else.

If I just keep running?—

Then I’m tackled from behind, my face driven into the pavement.

A knee grinds into my back, and my eyes fall shut at the sound of the cuffs clicking closed around my wrists.

TWENTY-FOUR

LENNON

I forgotmy phone charger at home before I drove up to my favorite coffee shop in the city to work. After the battery died at ten a.m. from forgetting to charge it overnight, too, I decided it was the universe telling me not to obsess over whether or not August would text all day.

He usually doesn’t when he’s working.

I had a lot of work to focus on, anyway.

And I was really scared about how shut down he’d gotten after I reacted to him calling himself my boyfriend.

I’d hurt him.

I hadn’t meant to, and he’s so the opposite of Jake. He tried so hardnotto make his hurt my problem. I could tell he was just shutting down right in front of my eyes and I didn’t know how to stop it. Maybe Icouldn’tstop it because of his mood disorder.

I spend half the day researching Bipolar Disorder, and I make a note to ask him if he has I or II when I see him next.

I won’t lie. What I read scared me.

But the scary parts also had little to do with the man I’ve gotten to know over the last month and a half. Yes, he’s been high-energy, occasionally runs over with so many ideas and creative thoughts it feels like his mouth can’t keep up, and barely sleeps.

I think what I witnessed last night was the flip of the coin into shut down.

It wasn’t scary, either.

He just seemed distressed, and like he went deep inward, same as the night Jake called the cops, and like forming words became difficult.

It’s not like I’ve never heard of Bipolar Disorder before. It’s just that it was always in reference to something terrible. Like back in youth group, there was a girl whose aunt was Bipolar, and she would go on gambling sprees and spend all the family’s money and never hold down a job. Back then the pastor did talk about mental illness as if it wasthe world’sterminology for satanic activity.

Which August said was what Kathy believed when she sent him away to that hellish troubled teen wilderness program.

I don’t think I ever believed that stuff. But then again, I stopped attending church with Jake about four years ago when Pastor Sean refused to marry a gay couple that had attended the church for years—they even met there.

I’d believed everyone when they saidall are welcome. There was a big banner out front of the church that said so.

It turned out, when push came to shove, it was a lie.