Page 140 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

I remember the woman from that first night so clearly. The gorgeous creature who giggled and shimmied simply because there was a hot tub, bubbles, and the sudden possibility of freedom. She’d looked at me as though she’d only just discovered she was allowed to want things.

That woman is still in there.

Some days, I catch her.

Other days, Jake’s shadow gets there first.

She has her own version of Dr. Delaney now. They met twice a week in the beginning, when Lennon could barely sleep without jolting awake convinced someone was standing over her. Now it’s once a week, every Thursday at ten, though her therapist has made it clear she can call if the nightmares get bad again.

The criminal case has its own schedule. A much slower one.

They’re charging Jake with aggravated assault of a family member with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony. More damning are the two capital murder charges for the pregnancies he knew about and continued poisoning her through.

There’s documentation that he attended the ultrasound appointments.

Pictures too.

In one, Jake stands behind Lennon with his hand resting possessively over her stomach, smiling into the camera while the grainy image of their child glows on the monitor beside them.

I saw that photograph once.

Once was enough.

Lennon is still bewildered by how he could do something so evil. She keeps looking for an explanation large enough to contain it, as though a crime that monstrous must have been committed for some equally monstrous purpose.

I suspect it was far simpler in Jake’s mind.

He wanted all of Lennon’s attention for himself.

A baby would divide that attention.

There was no demon whispering in his ear. No dark force crawling into his body and taking control of his hands.

Just a man who wanted something and convinced himself he was entitled to remove whatever stood in his way.

I know Lennon isn’t suggesting anything supernatural when she calls what he did evil. She means the ordinary human variety. But as someone who has spent much of his life being accused of having demons inside him, I find the evil in men both far more mundane and much more horrifying.

I’ve witnessed it more than once.

Men convincing themselves that cruelty is discipline and that the terrible thing they’re doing is necessary because the person they’re hurting has left them no other choice.

Those people at the troubled teen camp did it when they marched terrified teenagers through the scorching wilderness for days on end, barely feeding us.

Jake did it while poisoning his wife and unborn children.

He likely told himself he was saving his marriage.

Lennon had been quite far along in her last pregnancy.

Learning the truth has devastated her.

Not merely the truth of what he did, but the truth of her entire existence with him. Every migraine she dismissed. Every unexplained illness. Every time he brought her tea and sat beside the bed acting concerned. She’s had to revisit nine years of memories and ask herself which moments were real and which were performances.

There has been a lot of sobbing.

There has also been healing.

The kittens help.