The Brother Nobody Talks To

Episode 3 of 5 of My Husband’s Second Phone by Helen Abbott

He came out alone.

Nate stayed in the booth with his back to the window. Cole walked across the lot with his hands in his jacket and opened my passenger door without asking and got in, and the car smelled like him, which is a thing I did not know I remembered.

“Don’t get out,” he said. “Don’t go in there. He doesn’t know you followed him and it’s better if it stays that way for about four more days.”

“Cole.”

“Hi, Grace.”

Six years. My wedding, which he was not at. Ruby, whom he has never met. Our mother’s funeral, where he stood at the back and left before the end because I asked him to.

“What are you doing with my husband.”

“Helping him.”

“With what.”

He looked at the phone in my lap. The cheap one, with the crack.

“You’ve had that since Sunday,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “You answered a text on it.”

“How do you”

“Because I sent it.” He rubbed his face with both hands, the way he did at fifteen when he’d been caught at something. “I’m R. I asked if she was asleep and I got a yes in about four seconds, and Nate does not answer in four seconds, Nate answers in twenty minutes because he’s on a forklift. So I knew.”

I could not make my mouth work.

“He knew too,” Cole said. “Monday morning. He reached for the bag and it was light. He called me from the plant and he said, she’s got it, what do I do, and I said nothing. Let her have it.”

“Why.”

“Because if he took it back you’d have known he knew, and you’d have started acting different, and you can’t act different right now. Not in that house.”

There was a truck going by on the highway. It took a long time to pass.

“Cole. Why can’t I act different in my own house.”

He looked out the windshield for a while.

“Somebody’s been watching it,” he said.

“Watching what.”

“The house. Inside the house.” He said it flat, like a man reading it off a list. “Nate found it three weeks ago. He didn’t tell you because he thought you’d do exactly what you did today, which is get in a car and go find out, and whoever it is would see your face change. So he came to me. I’m the only person he knows who knows about this kind of thing, and I’m the only person you’d never in a million years think he’d call.”

“Who’s watching us.”

“We don’t know yet. Friday we know. That’s what the envelope is. That’s what the money went to.”

I thought about she won’t look there. I thought about don’t bring the kid.

“Where,” I said. “Where in the house.”

Cole opened the car door.

“Go home,” he said. “Pick up Ruby. Make dinner. Do the same things you always do, in the same order, and don’t touch your own phone for anything that matters, because it’s not clean either.”

“Cole. Where.”

He was half out of the car. He stopped.

“The smoke detector in her room,” my brother said. “Don’t look at it. Whatever you do, when you go in there tonight, don’t look up.”

I went home.

I picked up Ruby from the neighbor who owes me. I made dinner. Nate came in at four and kissed the top of my head and I let him and I did not look at his face for longer than I had to, because I did not trust what mine was doing.

At eight I took Ruby up.

She wanted the dinosaur book. I read the dinosaur book. I sat on the edge of her bed with the lamp on and the door open and I did not look up, and the not looking up was the hardest physical thing I have ever done, harder than her birth.

I kissed her forehead. I stood.

“Mom,” Ruby said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, bug.”

“The light in my room blinks at night.”

I kept my eyes on her face. I put everything I had into keeping my eyes on her face.

“What light, baby.”

“The little one. Up there.” She didn’t point. She was watching me the way she watches me when she already knows the answer to a question. “Daddy said it’s okay. He said it’s a broken light and I shouldn’t wave at it anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“I used to wave at it,” my daughter said. “Every night. I thought it was saying hi.”

My Husband’s Second Phone · ← Tuesday, Same Place · The Light in Her Room →