Page 98 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

My knees hit the floor.

Pain flashes white.

“August,” Marcus says near my ear. “Stop fighting us.”

“She’s not safe.”

“We’re going to take you back to your room.”

“Ask Lennon.” My cheek scrapes the tile as they force my arms behind me. “Call Lennon. She knows. She knows what they did.”

My mother says something soft behind us.

I only catch the end.

“—exactly what I was afraid of.”

A strap closes around one wrist.

Then the other.

Something inside me tears loose.

I scream.

Not words anymore. Just sound.

They lift me beneath the arms and drag me backward into the hall, my rubber socks skidding uselessly against the floor.

My mother remains framed in the doorway.

Smaller and smaller as they pull me away.

Her face is blurry again.

But her smile isn’t.

TWENTY-SIX

LENNON

The following night,I sit at the dinner table with two perfectly cooked medium-rare steaks on our plates and ask the husband blackmailing me into being here, “Where’s my proof that August is out of the mental hospital? Tomorrow’s Sunday, Jake.”

Jake’s face goes hard. Stern.

“Now, you listen. I’m the man of this house, and I told you to drop it. How is this you forgetting the man ever existed?”

In my head, there’s a horror-movie smash cut to me screaming alone in my car on the highway.

I jam the point of my steak knife into the table beside my plate.

“Jesus!” Jake jumps and shoves his chair back, eyes as big as saucers. “What the hell, Len? You just ruined the kitchen table!”

Exercising maximum self-control, I reach for the cloth napkin I ironed earlier and set beside my plate. I lift it and dab daintily at the steak sauce on the edges of my lips, then slowly and deliberately smooth it across my lap.

The knife is still comically vibrating, embedded in the wooden table through the placemat beside my plate.

I smile at my husband across the table.