Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
LENNON
I was mad at Jake before August stepped out of his RV.
But watching Jake do the thing he’s done for the last nine years—except to his brother instead of me?
Oh my god. He completely decimated and stripped August down to a shell in three minutes flat.
I suddenly get it in a way that I couldn’t before.
He’s a fucking bully.
And I want to tear his throat out.
“August?” I ask desperately as I watch him go catatonic in front of me. “August?”
I rush over to him, tentatively putting a hand gently on his back.
He jumps at the touch so I pull back, but at the same time he angles towards me as if my nearness is a comfort.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “It’s going to be okay.”
He blinks his eyes shut and holds them closed, eyebrows furrowed. “So. Embarrassed,” he manages to choke out.
“Can I touch you?” I whisper, meanwhile hearing the police arrive behind me.
He nods, eyes flying open as his hands reach forward and grip my forearm desperately. “Don’t let them take me.”
“Why would they take you? You didn’t do anything wrong?”
His jaw clenches tight, his head shaking back and forth. He doesn’t say anything else, and I get the feeling it’s because talking has suddenly become really, really difficult for him.
I’m not exactly sure what’s going on with him. If this is a different form of a panic attack, or another type of mental episode.
I just know Jake is lucky he called the police, because it’s only the sirens in the distance and needing to soothe August with Raven and others around us for support that keeps me from running at that bastard and scratching his eyeballs out.
The rage inside me feels so big and all-consuming, I think I’ll need to scream for a thousand miles of highway before I’ll ever get rid of it.
“It’s going to be okay,” I repeat, holding August’s arm tight.
But his stare has gone even more vacant, like he’s just gone totally absent from his body and this scene with his brother threatening him.
They talk about fight or flight, and it’s like he took flight while his body is still here. Jesus, what hell was it for him growing up in that household with Kathy and… and Jake?
I feel like the proverbial scales are falling from my eyes with regards to Jake.
Has he really been like this the whole time? How could I be married to a man for nine years and never know him at all?
But then, he never knew you, either.
Not really. He only knew the smaller, not-too-much version of myself I forced myself to be to fit into his world.
Jake had a story in his head of the wife he wanted… so I became her. I performed the role of Jake’s Wife for nine years, scripted by Jake, even though she bore no resemblance to the real me.
And it made me horrifically ill.
Maybe it made August ill, too, in a different way? What must it have been like to grow up in a house with family members who constantly denied your experience of reality and put you in mental hospitals when you wouldn’t go along with the lies they were telling you were the truth of your existence?
The fury boils hotter.
I position myself so that my body is between August and Jake.
I’m not sure why I couldn’t have the same feral response when it came to protecting myself from Jake’s manipulations.
But there’s something about watching him do it to someone else that makes the insidiousness so much clearer than when he was doing it to me.
Five minutes later, not one, but two police cars pull up, red and blue lights spinning. Four officers spill out in the beige and brown of the Hays County Sheriff’s Department.
Which tells me I need to know about how Jake must have described the situation to the dispatcher.
Jake hurries up to them as they approach, gesticulating wildly in our direction. He’s no doubt eager to share his version of events to get it framed in their heads the way he wants to.
Which is infuriating.
Maybe he expects me to jump forward and go argue with him in front of them. Playing into his expectations of me as a hysterical woman.
But fuck him.
I stay right where I am, continually murmuring that it’s going to be okay to August, who pulls even further into himself at the flashing lights.
Ricky and Raven come to stand around us, along with Mom and Patrick, who she introduced me to over the weekend.
“What’s going on, honey?” Mom asks, coming up beside me and August.
“It’s fine, Mom. Give us a little space, please?”
Mom backs up to join the group standing beside us as support. She’s good like that. However tumultuous things were between us for a while in my early twenties, I feel like we’ve gotten to a good place of navigating each other’s boundaries as adults.
Patrick has his arms over his chest, and Ricky’s stone-faced as he watches Jake emphatically complain to the police officers about August lunging violently at him.
Since there are four officers, two of them finally break off to come over to talk to us.
“Anyone need medical?” one says, gesturing over to where August stands, silent like a statue. August vehemently shakes his head no.
“No,” I say sharply, then stand up and temper my words, giving the officer a big smile. “No. Hi. I’m Lennon. This is August.” I gesture toward him, and then quickly towards Jake.
“That over there is my soon-to-be ex-husband. We were all having a lovely evening when my ex-husband came here and started threatening us, then calling you lovely folks. August is my ex-husband’s younger brother.
Nobody touched anybody. If Jake says they did, he’s lying.
We’d all just like to get to turn in for the night. ”
“We’re gonna need to talk to each of you alone.”
I stand taller. “That’s fine. Just know that August here is non-verbal sometimes.”
I’m talking out my ass with terms I’ve vaguely heard of on TikTok, but I need this cop to stand down and leave us the fuck alone.
I know enough to know that adding cops to a situation rarely makes it better unless there’s a break-in or actual violence has broken out. Neither of which is the case here.
The deputy looks from Jake to August, who has backed himself up against the side of the RV, arms held tight over his chest like a shield against the world.
“He came at me,” Jake calls out. “He’s crazy. Look at him.”
The deputy’s expression doesn’t change. “Sir, I’m going to need you to step over by the porch.”
“He needs to be taken in.” Jake snaps. “He was about to attack me.”
August flinches in reaction to his brother’s voice.
The deputy who walks close to him keeps his voice low, but I’m still close enough to overhear. “Right now I need to know if you’re hurt, if you hurt anybody, or if you’re thinking about hurting yourself.”
“No.” August’s voice cracks as he manages the word.
The deputy touches his shoulder mic. “214. Verbal domestic. Three adults on scene. One male appears to be in crisis, non-combative. Start one additional. CIT if available.”
Then, to August: “You can stay there. You don’t have to talk to EMS if you don’t want to, but you do need to stay where I can see you until I figure out what happened.”
The other officer separates me out and questions me.
“Was there any threat made to Mr. Coleman verbally?”
I breathe out. Thinking straight when I’m so angry is difficult, but I want to be absolutely clear with each answer so Jake can’t twist anything against me.
“No,” I say. “August repeatedly asked Jake to leave. At one point August called Jake a pig but that was the only insult exchanged from August’s end. Jake was the one doing all the talking. We just kept asking him to leave.”
The deputy asks if I threatened Jake verbally.
“No,” I say.
He asks about the alleged lunge.
I hold the officer’s gaze. “August took a step toward him, then stopped and stepped back. No physical contact was made. You can ask anyone in this park what they saw. Everyone witnessed it.”
He writes something in his notepad as the other cop begins questioning those standing around. Thankfully Raven stays beside August, who’s still standing ramrod straight, back to staring at nothing.
The officer continues his questions. “What about the matter of theft Mr. Coleman has accused you of?”
“He’s still legally my husband,” I say, careful to keep my voice monotone.
Jake weaponizes any emotionality against me?
Fine.
I’ll be a robot and report only facts.
“He cut off access to our shared bank accounts,” I say. “I retrieved only my own items from our house. If Jake wants to dispute the assets of community property to be divided in the divorce, I welcome him to do so in family court.”
The officer’s pen slows. He looks up.
Jake is talking to two officers simultaneously with the fluid ease of a man who is extremely comfortable in this situation and in his privilege.
I watch the officers’ body language shift toward his warmth. His voice carries. Not the words themselves, since they’ve moved further away. Just that bottomless, oh so reasonable register.
I watch it working even though the officers have seemed to take what August and I said at face value.
If it’s our word against Jake’s, I can’t be completely sure August won’t end up in the back of a police cruiser tonight.
But then Rosa, the park manager, appears at the lead officer’s elbow.
She’s a small-statured woman in her late sixties who’s been managing the property for six years. She loves kicking back with Mom and a few of the other ladies with a pitcher of Mom’s mixed margaritas. Thus far I’ve turned down the invitations to join, but Mom has told me what a spitfire Rosa is.
She arrives and introduces herself to the officer, along with the camera footage she had her grandson help her link to her phone. She loves keeping an eye on every inch of the park and is happy to run the replay of Jake’s arrival and the next ten minutes before he called 911.
I could hug the woman, but I stay in my corner where the deputy put me, anxiously watching August out of my periphery.
I see him watching Rosa, too.
Slowly, August’s posture straightens out and his head lifts back up. So that by the time EMS arrives on scene, he’s able to stand tall and calm as he declines the need for any medical attention.
It still takes a long time, and I don’t miss how August’s hand hanging down at his side is still shaking.
The senior officer comes back.
“No grounds for action,” he says. He holds my gaze for a moment that is not comfortable. “The property theft claim is a civil matter.”
I breathe out.
“The domestic disturbance call goes on record regardless,” he says. “It’s procedure. I just wanted to let you know.”
There it is.
“I understand,” I say.
I watch Jake receive his verdict from the other two officers. I see the recalculation happening. Jake in real time understanding that the cameras and Rosa and the witnesses combined into something he couldn’t fully control tonight.
But the record still exists.
He looks at me across the plaza.
And smiles.
Because in spite of everything, he got what he came for.
The domestic disturbance call exists in the record, along with all of Jake’s accusations, inked and official.
To be weaponized against me again at a future date.
There never was going to be a peaceful path to leaving him, was there?
He was only ever a “kind, good guy” to me when I let him be in complete control and played the part he wrote for me.
For the first time, I’m meeting the man I’ve been married to for nine years, face to face at last.
Unmasked.