Page 123 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

His brows draw together. “What do you mean?”

“Was there a note?” I hate every word as it leaves my mouth. “I’m not trying to make this worse. I know this is awful to even say. But your brother has been poisoning me. So I have to ask.”

August’s mouth parts. His head swings toward me, then jerks back to the road. “Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“No, Lennon. Holy shit.”

He scrubs a hand over his mouth, the wheel shifting slightly before he corrects it. “There wasn’t a note. And there wasn’t an autopsy. He had the diagnosis. There was an empty bottle. Mom was screaming. Jake was the one who called 911 because I couldn’t… I couldn’t move. They concluded cause of death on the scene.”

The dark outside presses against the windows.

“Do you think Jake…?” I can’t finish. Even after everything, some part of me recoils from putting that much evil into the air.

“Or Mom,” August says.

His voice is flat now. Too controlled.

I can feel the moment rearranging itself inside him. The past shifting, furniture dragged across the floor of a room he thought he knew by heart.

“There’s no way to know,” he says. “And maybe we’re wrong. Maybe this is just our brains trying to make monsters out of people who were already bad enough.”

“Maybe.”

“But Dad hadn’t been depressed,” he says, and now the words are coming faster. “Not then. He’d been in good spirits. The flips could happen quickly, sure. Like a balloon popping. But I was fifteen by then. I knew his patterns. He’d been talking to me more. He told me he was thinking about leaving my mom.”

I go cold.

“He was leaving her?”

August nods, staring at the road like he’s seeing something projected across it. “He said if he found a place, I could come with him. He said we’d figure it out. He said I didn’t have to stay in that house forever.”

“Oh my God.” My voice is barely there. “He was going to leave her, and that’s when it happened?”

“I hear it.” His laugh is hollow and awful. “I fucking hear it.”

“Even if it wasn’t Jake,” I whisper. “You told me he learned everything at her knee.”

August’s grip tightens on the wheel until his knuckles pale under the ink. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” I agree.

We go quiet.

The road keeps moving, because the world is rude like that. It doesn’t stop for revelations.

“Everything I thought I knew was a lie,” he whispers.

I let out a dark little laugh. “Welcome to the club.”

His face twists. “Fuck, Lennon. I’m so sorry.”

He reaches for me again, and this time I bring his hand to my mouth before he can pull away and kiss his knuckles.

“We escaped them,” I say against his skin.

His hand flexes in mine. “When this is over, I’m going to spend a week touching you without looking over my shoulder.”