A fair request. Brett stopped. Thinking he’d turn and go back to work.

“I listened to you, Jeff. For over half an hour. I understand that you think this is all me—but who, when he says he wants to reconcile, calls his wife a stupid bitch?”

What? Had he heard that right? Moving forward, Brett stood outside the door, his hand on the knob.

“I know, that was completely wrong,” Jeff said in a tone that told Brett his friend was truly sorry. “I apologized. It’s just...you have no idea how hard it’s been with you gone and me not knowing where you are. Not being able to see you or Cody. My son is learning new words, and I don’t even understand them because I’m not there...”

“And telling me I’m not very bright just because I don’t agree with your take on our problems?”

“Frustration, Chloe. You know I don’t mean it. Hell, you’re smarter than I am by far, and we both know it.”

Nerves tense, heart pounding, Brett slipped into old habits, zeroing in on the mundane. The thoughts and words that were least threatening.

Jeff had been an average student. Chloe had excelled. But that only made one a better student than the other...

“And it’s not like you’ve never lost your cool, or said things you aren’t proud of,” Jeff said.

Brett’s shoulders relaxed. Maybe he should go...

“I’ve never called you an effin’ liar.” Chloe stumbled over the words.

“Would you just stop?” A new tone had entered Jeff’s voice. A tone Brett had never heard before. One that kept him standing at the door. “Why do you have to go on and on and on? It’s like you remember every bad thing I’ve ever done!”

“I’m only talking about the past hour, Jeff. You’ve threatened to divorce me if I don’t come home. To have me charged with fraud for saying that our home is my address when I’m not living there.”

“Stop!”

Brett heard the word just as Chloe screamed out, “Jeff!” and Brett burst through the door.

Jeff had been closest to him and the force with which Brett pushed into the room knocked him back, stopping him just before his raised hand made contact with his wife’s face.

Like a slow-motion movie, everyone just stood there. Frozen.

Jeff’s hand suspended, Chloe ducking and Brett breathing fire.

In the next second, or countless seconds later, Jeff’s hand fell slowly to his side. Brett could feel every inch of the descent. Chloe, crying, ran from the room.

And Brett...couldn’t leave.

The look of horror, of utter terror, on his friend’s face held Brett in place.

“Oh, my God, what have I done?” Hands over his head, Jeff fell to the bed. Rocking back and forth. “What have I done? Oh, God, what have I done?”

Brett couldn’t comfort him. If he hadn’t come in when he did, Jeff would have hit his wife.

That wasn’t okay. Jeff wasn’t okay. His marriage could very well be over.

The man rocked. His body shook, and Brett knew he was crying.

And remembered a night more than fifteen years earlier. He’d been a freshman college student, had had a call from his father who was in jail, wanting him to bail him out. He hadn’t done it. For his mother’s sake.

His father had been crying, too. Asking for Brett’s help. He’d turned his back. On his own father.

But he’d called his mother. Thinking she’d be thankful enough that she’d start talking to him again. Let him back in her life.

She hadn’t responded.

He’d just lost his sister, and that night he knew he’d lost both of his parents, as well.

He’d started to cry. Jeff had come in. Brett had pretended to be asleep. Praying that Jeff would either go to bed or get what he’d come in for and leave.

It turned out that he’d come in for Brett. Because he’d known that Brett had refused to help his father. He’d known, even though Brett hadn’t said so, that leaving his father in jail—no matter how much the asshole had deserved it—made Brett feel dirty.

Jeff hadn’t asked Brett to go get drunk. He hadn’t made a joke or shrugged off the situation. He’d laid a hand on Brett’s shoulder. Told him he’d get through it. And he’d sat with him for the rest of the night, listening to the horror stories of the previous eight years of Brett’s life.

Moving slowly, worrying about Chloe, wishing Ella was there, Brett approached the bed. Sat down. Put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder.

“You need help, man,” he said. “You gotta get help.”

Jeff stilled. He quit crying. But he didn’t meet Brett’s gaze. “The tension...it just gets... I tell myself everything will be fine. I remind myself that everyone else works and raises a family. That my challenges aren’t the end of the world. That there are others so much worse off. Others who handle so much more. I think of the good times. And still...the tension builds.”

Brett wasn’t a counselor. As Ella had said that night on the boat—he paid others to do the work.

“What causes the tension?” he asked because Jeff seemed to need to talk.

Shrugging, Jeff shook his head.

“Is it money?”

“Maybe. I’m definitely more irritable when stocks are down.”

Not uncommon after a bad day at work.

“Look at me,” Brett said.

Jeff slowly turned his head. But he didn’t hold Brett’s gaze for long. Clearly his shame was too great.

“Jeff?”

The other man turned his head again. “Are drugs involved?”

“No.”

“And there’s no pressing debt? Are you gambling?”

“No! Of course not! If I knew I had a problem, don’t you think I’d tell you? Tell myself, for God’s sake? I’m losing the only thing in the world I care about!”

“Okay. Okay.” Stereotypes, profiling, weren’t going to help here. Because the answers weren’t always easy.

Weren’t always clear or neat or clean.

“So when did it start? What caused you to lash out the first time? How long has it been building?”

Jeff sat for a long time. Brett heard the front door open and close. Hoped to God that Chloe was going straight to The Lemonade Stand. Or to Ella, who would take her there.

He needed to call Ella. To warn her.

“You know...” Jeff sat up a little straighter. “I’ll tell you exactly when it started,” he said. “It was after Cody was born. Chloe was really struggling with her postpartum depression. I had to take time off work to stay home with her and take care of the baby. She’d follow me from room to room. Lie on the floor beside my desk when I was trying to get my work done. I get paid on commission, and I see money going out the door right and left, my marriage is pretty much empty and now I’ve got this tiny little human being who needs me 24/7. It’s like there wasn’t enough of me to go around...”

Reminded of how he felt when Ella had handed him the home pregnancy test results when he’d come through the door all those years before, Brett wished he couldn’t relate.

But he could.

“I wasn’t ever going to be able to do enough,” Jeff was saying. “I couldn’t provide enough. If Chloe wasn’t going to be able to contribute, I’d need a cleaning person, a babysitter, and I had to start a college fund, too. The pressure was always there, pushing me harder and harder.”

“But things got better. Chloe got better.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t think we had a problem. Everything was fine.” Jeff hung his head. “Or I thought it was.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got some anger built up over it all.” Brett said the only thing that made sense to him.

“I know that every time the stocks go down now, even when I know the recovery is going to follow, I get that same feeling I had right after Cody was born. Like I’m strangling, and there’s nothing I can do...”

“You need help.”

“Yeah.”

“You can get through this, Jeff. You and Chloe.”

He shook his head. “She’s never going to stick with me now. Not after what I did tonight. I don’t deserve her.”

Maybe not. And maybe Chloe would file for a divorce. Maybe she needed to.