Free The First Husband by Laura Dave Page B

Sammy to try to get that can. So I can’t really take that as a sign of progress.”
    Griffin just stared at his brother. “Cheryl kicked you out? Why would she do that?”
    “Well, she needed to catch her breath for a minute,” Jesse said. “That can happen.”
    “When, Jesse? When can that happen?”
    “You know,” he said, “when you find out your husband got someone else pregnant.”
    I looked at him in disbelief— what did he just say? As if reading my thought, Jesse nodded again.
    “It’s complicated,” Jesse said.
    I looked at Jesse for so long that someone might have wondered if I were thinking it was possible that he was going to take his words back, say something different instead. But maybe I was also looking at him for that long because I was scared to look any other way—to catch Griffin’s eyes and see what he was or wasn’t thinking about what his brother had just revealed.
    But Griffin wasn’t saying a word. The next several, I was guessing, were going to have to come from Jesse. Then they did. And they were for me.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “Griffin’s a little rude. I’m Jesse. Griffin’s brother. Who are you?”
    He held out his hand, which I imagined was sticky from the Fudgsicle. But I took it.
    “Griffin’s wife,” I said.

10
    “ H e’s actually a genius, believe it or not,” Griffin said. “Like a certified one. His IQ is off the charts and he skipped two grades in school when we were growing up. Got a full ride to MIT at sixteen years old. Though maybe that did more damage than good. . . .”
    We were lying in bed—my first night in our bed—and I was staring at the ceiling, only a bedside light still on. I was blinking too quickly, trying not to give into the tight ball taking hold in my chest, trying not to focus on the little-person-size hole in the wall near our bedroom door—the result of a paintball fight gone awry. It was now covered with a bedsheet that was unequal to the task of keeping out the outside world.
    Instead of focusing too hard on any of that, I tried to make out the designs on the ceiling overhead, still mostly visible in the soft light: the intricate and beautiful designs, interstitial numbers and words, stand-alone letters, an entire system I couldn’t quite comprehend, right above my head. Griffin had just come to bed, after a longer conversation with Jesse, one I didn’t partake in, one in which Jesse provided some details about this other woman—he knew her from graduate school—and fewer details about what he was going to do now.
    Now Griffin was whispering. I knew why and I wasn’t sure why. Jesse and the kids were in a bedroom across the hall, watching a movie— Raiders of the Lost Ark, I believed—the volume turned to high. They were laughing and shouting at the screen, shouting louder than the movie itself. Silent contest apparently over.
    “I just wish that you hadn’t gotten such a bad first impression of him,” Griffin said.
    “It wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Really . . .”
    Then I cleared my throat because I wasn’t sure what to say next. A bad first impression, though, seemed like the wrong terminology. Someone’s mother being loud or eerily quiet was a bad first impression. Someone’s childhood friend drinking too much wine and getting silly. But finding a married brother-in-law living in your new house with his young twin sons because he’d impregnated a woman who wasn’t his wife? That seemed like something else.
    Still, I tried to think of something supportive to say—something to get both of us out of our heads. But, the truth was, I was feeling judgmental of Jesse. And that wasn’t the only problem. This was the first time since I’d met Griffin that I was aware there was something I didn’t know how to say to him.
    Griffin turned onto his side to face me, resting his hand on his elbow.
    “They just don’t have anywhere else to go right now,” he said. “I mean, I guess they could go stay at my