Page 28 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“Are you expecting—” she starts. I shake my head.

Three more raps. Harder.

Marie pulls the sheet up and calls out, “One second.”

She looks around for clothes. I’m already pulling on my swim trunks from the floor.

Marie finds a t-shirt and shorts from her suitcase, hopping to pull them up over her ass as she goes to the door.

I stay back, pulling my own shirt on, and looking for my slip-on sandals, so I hear it before I see it?—

The sharp inhale Marie takes before she says, “How did you know where I am?”

“Location tracking,” says a familiar voice from outside that smacks me like a fist to the face. “I knew one day I’d?—”

I look up in shock. What the f?—

Why is mymotherstanding in the doorway?

She’s exactly the same as when I last saw her seven years ago. She’s got the same rigid posture and same thick mask of Texas-church-lady makeup. She wouldn’t even go out to get the mail without an hour of “putting on her face” first.

Her eyes shoot from Marie to me and back to Marie.

“Mom?” The confused word comes out before I’ve decided to say it.

Marie spins.

She looks at me like she’s never seen me before.

“You’re Jake’sbrother?” she says.

And there it is.Jake’s brother.Which means she’s?—

Oh shit.

The husband she left yesterday?—

“Jake’s wife isn’t Marie,” I say, still dumbfounded. I never met her but I heard a little bit about her before I stopped talking to Jake and Mom. Things were a little hectic back then, what with the drugs and the crazy shit I was up to non-stop. “It’s Lauren or Lucy, or L?—”

“Lennon,” she whispers, eyes as wide as saucers. “Marie is my middle name.”

The full horror hits me.

I just fucked my brother’s wife.

Soon to be ex-wife, but still.

I watch it land on her face and I can see the exact moment it tips from shock into something else.

“You’re the brother. From the mental hospital?” she squeaks.

And there it is.

Jake’s version of me.

The wordmental hospitalin her mouth in that newly frightened register, and I can hear exactly how he told it. In his mournful, slightly martyred voice. All,my poor troubled brother,andit was so hard on our family.

I know what I look like to her right now, which is exactly what he always said I was.