Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
AUGUST
I light out early from the RV, not wanting to run into Lennon getting coffee at the plaza café, even though dragging myself out of bed was a struggle when my alarm sounded this morning. Still, I don’t want any accidental run-ins this morning.
It’s best for both of us if we get some space from each other.
I’m clearly getting way too intense, too fast.
The woman’s barely just left her husband, for fuck’s sake.
God knows I’m embarrassed enough by the needy, manic energy I’ve been pouring all over her lately.
So I drive up to Austin early. Early early, like before dawn, and hit up one of the popular jogger’s trails around Zilker Park to get my workout in. I run harder and faster than normal, but I don’t even care if I’m exhausted at work today.
The more I’m lost in work and exhaustion, the less opportunity there is to ruminate about her and what a fucking idiot I am.
Calling myself her boyfriend.
What are we, in Jr. High?
It gives me a full-body cringe every time I think about how I just said it. Out loud, so casually, like it was an easy assumption. And how I thought she’d be happy about it.
I think that’s the worst part. I anticipated her happiness, ’cause I guess girls had been telling me for over a decade all they wanted me to tell them was I loved them and mean it, but I never quite could.
And then suddenly, when I could… I cringe again at what any sensitive, thinking man would have realized was going to be her reaction.
“I can’t have a boyfriend, August! I’m still married. I barely left my husband a month ago and I have no money and none of my shit together. I thought you got that!”
Followed by the even more damning, “Oh my god, this was such a bad idea. Mom was right.”
But I couldn’t take it back by then. It was already out of the bottle and I didn’t know how to stuff it back inside.
Then the balloon popped and it was all I could barely manage to get a syllable or two out, much less address the Stage 5 Disaster I’d just unleashed.
Because everything was suddenly landing in perspective.
I’d had one story going on in my head—yeah we were up against mad, impossible odds, but maybe just maybe we’d make it through this all and come out together on the other side of it.
Meanwhile Lennon was a grown-up who saw this for what it was all along… a fun, sexy escape from her problems.
What else did I think a man like me could be to a woman like her?
Grandiose delusions are a symptom of the hypomania, and imagining she’d want to be with me for longer than a fling was my most grandiose delusion yet.
Which is saying something, considering I was convinced I was a prophet for a few months in 2019.
To be fair, I was also taking a lot of drugs back then.
Nevertheless, I know I’m a bastard who’s on the spectrum of crazy, and I ought to have stopped to second-guess what the hell was happening between me and Lennon.
I should have double-checked the reality I thought I was experiencing with Dr. Delaney’s much cooler head before doing something as fucking stupid as making assumptions about a new relationship.
He and I talked extensively about my divorce with Priscilla and everything I’d need to do differently if I ever ventured into another serious relationship—and it all seemed so weighty, I just assumed I’d stay single till Owen was a teenager at least.
Then she belly-flopped into that damn sixty-two-degree pool with me.
And I forget every damn bit of good sense I ever learned.
The day at the shop goes slow and I feel like I’m moving through molasses.
I’m at rock bottom of the coaster and can’t imagine ever crawling my way back up again.
My thoughts are sluggish but at least my hands keep moving through muscle memory, even if the work takes longer than usual.
I have to cancel my last appointment of the day because the first two just took so much longer than normal.
No one’s upset at me about it.
Everyone’s happy as pie with the work they got.
I’m just at the bottom of the well, straining to look up and find any patch of sky.
I clean up my station and finally reach for my phone, heart beating faster for the first time all day as I click into my messages, and sinking again just as fast.
Nothing from Lennon.
I guess she agrees about having some space.
Then a text pops up from Priscilla.
I guess it’s good my stomach was already on the ground, because it bottoms out again when I read the text.
[PRISCILLA: I think we need to pause pickup this weekend until we talk. Is it true you’re off your meds?]
What?
There are three missed calls from her I somehow didn’t feel buzz through my pocket all afternoon. I slam my palm against the steering wheel and call her back immediately.
It goes straight to voicemail.
Why didn’t she call the shop? I always tell her to call the shop if it’s an emergency and she can’t reach my cell. Phones off when we’ve got clients in the chair—that’s the rule—and today was nonstop.
I check the timestamp. An hour ago. I call again.
Damn it, Scilla, pick up.
Who the hell told her I’m off my meds? Because I’m not. I take them religiously, reminders on my phone and everything. I would never risk my relationship with my son by being that reckless.
I text her:
[AUGUST: of course I’m on my meds. I don’t screw around with that stuff. What’s going on? Who told you that?]
Another message pops up.
[PRISCILLA: Fine, then just come over. Owen’s really upset ur not here. We’ll talk after he’s down.]
That’s all I need. I can clear this up. I have to clear this up.
Owen is my primary priority.
Always.
I toss my phone onto the passenger seat, yank the gearshift into reverse, back out, and tear out of the parking lot toward the South Austin neighborhood where my son is apparently in distress.
The whole way there I keep the needle locked exactly on the limit, both hands at ten and two.
The last thing I need tonight is a ticket when I’m trying to prove what a responsible father I am.
Priscilla’s street is the kind of quiet that used to make me feel like I’d made it. Squat brick ranch houses with sprinklers and basketball hoops bolted over every third garage. Her place is the one with the flower bed she’s babied since she moved in.
The driveway’s empty, which means God is kind and Priscilla asked Trent to make himself scarce so we can work out our parenting shit without him hovering.
She’s good like that. She doesn’t triangulate him into our parenting shit.
I also understand why he hates me. Like everyone else, he probably assumes a big guy like me is automatically volatile. Priscilla knows me better than that.
Yeah, I’ve been in a bar fight or two in my life. But I’ve never been anything but gentle with her or Owen.
So I sit in the truck a second, breathe several times on purpose, and then push out and walk up to the front door.
I knock lightly so I don’t get Owen all riled up—the little buddy overstimulates easy, and if he’s already upset I don’t want to make it—
Which is right when the door opens.
To my brother’s smug-ass face.
What the fuck? This is the last thing I need or can handle today.
“August. Took you long enough to respond to the mother of your child’s distressed call.”
I look around in confusion, but don’t see Priscilla. I have no idea what’s actually happening here.
It clicks immediately, though, exactly where she heard the lie that I’m off my meds.
I push past him into the house and call out, “Scilla? Scilla, it’s me, August.”
The living room swallows me for a second before I can get my bearings.
Owen’s building blocks are still fanned out across the rug where he must’ve abandoned them mid-tower.
There’s a basket of clean laundry nobody’s folded yet balanced on the arm of the couch.
The big front window looks out over Priscilla’s flower bed, sheer curtains pulled back to let the evening in.
It’s the kind of ordinary, lived-in domestic scene I used to belong to and now only visit.
Usually I feel comforted by the hominess every time I step inside. Like it’s a place where a kid might grow up happy.
But tonight, the quiet in here makes the hair stand up on my arms.
I don’t notice the door shutting behind me until I turn and find my own mother, of all people, planted in front of it.
Again, what the hell is going on here?
“Priscilla?” I call out again. “Trent?” I’ll take the all-American football player as backup at this point, honestly. Something is seriously not right.
“They’re not here. They took Owen to go stay with Trent’s parents.” My mother’s mouth curls, satisfied. “Nice guy, by the way. He’ll be a good father to your son.”
“What the hell did you say to them?” I ask. “Why does Priscilla think I’m off my meds?”
Jake shrugs, that same congenial smile still fixed in place.
“I just stopped by and explained how out of control you are right now. Destroying your own brother’s marriage by recklessly seducing my wife.
I told her I had to call the cops when you threatened me a couple weeks ago.
And how it’s only been escalating since then.
How frankly right now, you’re dangerous. ”
“That’s a lie.” My eyes cut around the room, hunting for a way out.
It’s not safe here. I don’t know how I know it, but I know it’s not safe for me to be alone in this house with my brother and my mother.
At the RV park I was surrounded by people who could back me up.
Here there’s nobody except the two of them, who found ingenious ways to take me apart my whole life.
They can’t do anything to you anymore.
I run Dr. Delaney’s words over and over. They don’t have any control over you except what you give them.
Underneath though, I’m still panicking. Dr. Delaney never met my mother.
Mom’s planted in front of the only door I came in through, and Jake’s drifted over to block the kitchen doorway, which is the only other way out of this house.
They’ve got me trapped.
I lift both hands, palms out, the universal sign of surrender. Along with: I’m not the problem here.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I say, working hard to keep my voice neutral even though every muscle in my body is tensed. “Just let me go.”
“You don’t want any trouble?” Jake laughs, and it’s not a nice sound. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you fucked my wife.”
He steps toward me and I back up, eyes flicking to the couch. If I can get around it, and if he follows, maybe I can loop past him to the kitchen out the back door? My mind’s throwing out one exit strategy after another.
They lured me here for a reason.
I don’t know what it is yet, and I don’t want to stick around and find out.
Get out of the house and back to Lennon. Whatever I need to sort out with Priscilla, it can wait. Until it’s not just me alone with two people who hate me standing between me and the only exits.
Jake reaches down and picks up one of Owen’s toys off the rug—the little plastic T-rex that always sets Owen off giggling. I do the tiny-arms bit back, tucking my own arms up against my chest and stomp-chasing him around the house until he’s shrieking.
Blind rage at him even touching something that belongs to my son has me this close to snapping and taking the bait.
But this is so obviously a trap.
And I’m not the August I was even three years ago.
So, hands shaking, I breathe out hard and turn to stomp for the front door instead. “I’m leaving.”
My mother plants herself even more stubbornly in front of it.
“Move,” I tell her, low, dead serious.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Or what? You gonna put hands on your own mother? You’re just like your father. Go ahead!”
And then, bizarrely, she’s right in my face and shrieking, “Help! Oh my God, help! Somebody help!”
I back away from her again, hands still up, making it obvious I’m not laying a finger on anybody. No matter what they’re trying to pull here.
I don’t even clock that Jake’s drifted up behind me until my shoulder blades brush his chest. It’s the lightest possible contact, barely a graze. My whole body is still angled toward my mother, not him.
Doesn’t matter. It’s enough.
Jake staggers backward like he’s just taken a hit from a linebacker. Three dramatic, lurching steps, way more ground than half an inch of accidental contact could ever explain, his arms pinwheeling—
I don’t even have time to get out what the hell are you doing before his back finds the front window and he leans his whole weight into the glass.
It gives all at once.
One flat, cracking sound, and then he’s gone—
There’s an explosion of glass as he busts through the curtain and out into Priscilla’s flower bed, and continues rolling until he comes to a stop on the lawn, arms and face bloody.
My mother is still screaming behind me.
Up and down the street, porch lights are flicking on, neighbors stepping out onto their lawns to see what the noise was.
And I understand, all at once, that the trap already closed around me. I was caught the second I walked through that door.
Rational thought just ends.
I push past Mom, throw the front door open, and run.
It barely registers that my own mother is screaming behind me: “He attacked us! He’s a maniac!” or that sirens are already rising somewhere close, way too close and way too fast for anyone to have called them just now.
Some small, stupid part of me thinks if I just keep running I can outrun the whole nightmare. Wake up somewhere else.
If I just keep running—
Then I’m tackled from behind, my face driven into the pavement.
A knee grinds into my back, and my eyes fall shut at the sound of the cuffs clicking closed around my wrists.