My head jerked back. “What happened to yours?”

“Oh, my God. Now he’s acting like he doesn’t know,” she whispered into the phone. Looking back at me, she spoke slowly. “Because you shattered my phone, Brody.”

“I—what? You just called me from your cell phone less than an hour ago. I just got home. My goddamn car is still running!”

“Ugh. Whatever, I’ll just pay for the new phone, Dad. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you soon.” Sliding off the bar stool, she walked past me and toward her part of the house. “I know, I’m scared to be here with him, but I’ll be out of here soon. Love you too. Bye.”

Dropping the phone on the couch, she kept walking and didn’t stop until I slammed my hand down on the bar and yelled, “What the f**k are you doing, Olivia? You know I’ve been gone! You f**king called me because I wasn’t home. I don’t know what the f**k you did to your phone, but I still have it on mine that you called.”

She shrugged. “I wanted a new phone.”

“You—you wanted—you wanted a new phone?! That’s what all this was about? Olivia! What the f**k is wrong with you? You told me you were going to kill yourself. You said you wanted to be with Tate, and I come home to find you telling your goddamn dad that I’m crazy, and scaring you, and you think I’m going to beat you?”

“Well, you were yelling, what was I supposed to think?” she screeched back.

“When have I ever laid a hand on you, Olivia? When?” She didn’t respond and my voice got louder. “Answer me!”

“You haven’t. Yet! But you’re always yelling, you’re always mad at me. It’s only going to escalate. This is how abusive relationships begin—with the man treating the woman this way.”

I huffed harshly a few times and paced the short distance between the bar and kitchen table before sitting down in a chair and grabbing at my hair. “You have got to be kidding me! You expect me not to yell when you pulled the shit you just did? When you drain our bank accounts? When you shatter practically every dish in our kitchen? And then you go back to acting like nothing happened at all? Or you break your own phone and then call your dad and place some weird blame for it on me? Who wouldn’t yell at you about that shit after almost five f**king years?!”

“Yeah, Brody. Five years. Five! Five years of coping with the fact that my distant and hateful husband murdered my baby!”

The air left my lungs in a hard rush, and I gripped at the table when I started falling forward. When I was able to speak again, my voice was low and dark. “I did not murder Tate. How dare you even suggest that. You aren’t the only one who’s been struggling. I struggle through what happened every day, and there are days when I feel like I can’t even get myself out of bed because the grief is too much. But you don’t see me lying about committing suicide. You don’t see me trying to place blame somewhere else.”

“Because there is nowhere else to place the blame. It’s all on you. Always has been, always will be. You’ve taken everything from me. Never forget that.” She took a few steps and stopped before the hallway. “I’m going to my parents’, as you obviously heard. Unless you’ve deluded yourself into thinking I’m going to commit suicide again,” she sneered. “I want a new iPhone waiting for me when I get home tomorrow.”

“You’re sick, Liv,” I whispered to the empty kitchen after I’d heard her bedroom door slam shut. “And you need help. God, you need so much help.”

9

Brody

June 9, 2015

ONCE I WAS done explaining everything to my chief, I sat there silently as I waited for him to respond. He’d remained quiet and emotionless as I told him about the changes in Olivia since Tate’s death, and how they’d been progressing quickly over the last couple weeks.

It’d been four days since she told me she was going to kill herself, and even though she’d spent most of that time at her parents’ house, I’d refused to leave ours just in case.

And no, I hadn’t bought her a new phone.

“Saco, I know it’s been difficult for you ever since Tate passed,” he finally said, “and I know things at home have been, well . . . rocky. I respect that you want to get help for your wife, really I do. But you should maybe think about letting her family handle this.”

My head jerked back and I scrambled for the right words. “What—how could—what does that—what are you—what?!”

“Sometimes, as men, we need to know when—”

“Are you kidding? Did you not hear all I just told you? She’s with her family most of the time and she’s only getting worse. She’s telling them that she’s scared of me, and knowing the kind of people they are, they’ll believe that I’m actually beating her or something.”

“They do, Saco.”

I kept talking over him. “I need to get her help, I need to get doctors to see her. She won’t willingly go, when I suggest something she—”

“Brody!” he snapped. “They do believe you’re beating her.”

My chest heaved up and down quickly as I stared at him. “What?”

Chief sighed heavily and sank into his chair. “I didn’t want to have to tell you about this.”

When he didn’t expand on what “this” was, I slapped my hand down on his desk. “Tell me what?”