My wife looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I called the police,” less than 5 minutes after I learned my brother had been arrested and his wife was being held for deportation.
Chapter 1
There was no panic in Emma’s face, no guilt, not even surprise. She said it with the calmness of someone admitting she had canceled a dentist appointment, and in that moment I realized the woman I had trusted for eight years was capable of doing something I had never imagined.
My brother, Ryan, and his wife, Lily, had moved to Denmark earlier that year after spending several years in the United States. Ryan and I were Danish, while Emma and Lily were American, although Emma had lived with me in Copenhagen since we married. Lily was from Portland, Oregon, proudly alternative, endlessly enthusiastic about organic food, photography, obscure bands, and marijuana.
Ryan was much the same. At thirty-four, he could still talk about cannabis strains with the enthusiasm most men reserve for sports or investments. Pot was illegal where we lived, and although I didn’t smoke anymore, I generally viewed their habit as their problem.
Emma claimed to feel the same way.
At least in the beginning.
Six months earlier, Emma had left Denmark temporarily to finish part of her master’s degree in the Netherlands. Around the same time, Ryan and Lily returned to Copenhagen and rented an apartment twenty minutes from mine.
Lily’s immigration situation was messy from the start. She entered on a tourist visa while they supposedly worked on residency paperwork. Weeks became months, and because Ryan treated deadlines as philosophical suggestions, very little seemed to happen.
Lily once joked in a message to Emma that she and Ryan might simply have a baby. She said Denmark offered generous family benefits and that having a child would make it harder for immigration authorities to separate them.
Emma hadn’t found it funny.
While she was away studying, I spent more time with Ryan and Lily than usual. We ate together, went to concerts, and one weekend drove to Sweden because Ryan had found a cheap cabin near the coast.
That trip changed Emma.
Sweden had always been somewhere she’d wanted us to visit together. We’d talked for years about taking the ferry, renting a car, and driving along the western coastline. Life kept getting in the way.
When I told Emma that Ryan and Lily had invited me, she was quiet.
“You’re going without me?”
“It was last minute.”
“But you’ve always said we’d do Sweden together.”
“We still can.”
“With them?”
“No. Just us.”
She said she understood.
She didn’t.
After that, whenever I mentioned Lily, Emma’s replies shortened.
Then came the comments.
“Lily made dinner again? How domestic.”
“She takes a lot of pictures of you.”
“Funny how she’s always available whenever Ryan calls.”
I dismissed it as jealousy caused by distance.
Then Emma and Lily entered the same photography contest.
Emma submitted a black-and-white street photograph. Two days later, Lily entered a colorful series of waterfront portraits.
Neither woman addressed the other directly, but suddenly their social media pages filled with vague comments about “people who copy everything” and “some people thinking creativity means ownership.”
It was ridiculous.
I finally asked Emma what was going on.
She surprised me by answering honestly.
“She makes me feel inadequate.”
“Lily?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She cooks for you.”
I almost laughed. “I cook in our marriage.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?”
Emma hesitated.
Then everything came out.
She hated how much time Lily spent around me. She remembered that when I was twenty, I’d once admitted I had been attracted to Asian women, and Lily happened to be Filipino-American. She resented that I had attended Ryan and Lily’s wedding while Emma was abroad finishing her bachelor’s degree. She worried Ryan would get me smoking again.
“And you complain about them to me,” she said, “then smile like they’re your favorite people when you’re with them.”
“They’re family.”
“So you tell me Lily annoys you, then spend three nights a week at their apartment?”
“I’m spending time with my brother.”
“With both of them.”
I thought Emma was overreacting.
I told her so.
After she returned home, things settled down. I stopped visiting Ryan as often, partly to keep the peace and partly because being around him could genuinely be exhausting.
For several weeks, Emma and I were good again.
Then one Thursday evening, Ryan called.
He sounded high.
“Come over,” he said. “Lily’s making some weird mushroom thing.”
“No thanks.”
“Come on.”
“I’ve got dinner here.”
I hung up.
Emma, chopping carrots in the kitchen, asked, “Ryan?”
“Yeah. He’s baked already.”
She became quiet.
Ten minutes later, she picked up the dog’s leash.
“I’m taking Cooper around the block. We need tomatoes, too.”
“Okay.”
She kissed my cheek and left.
Forty minutes later, police knocked on Ryan’s apartment door after receiving an anonymous report that a neighbor smelled marijuana.
They found enough to issue charges.
That alone was bad.
Then an officer pulled up Lily’s identification.
Her tourist visa had expired.
Because her residency paperwork had never been completed, she was transferred from the police station to an immigration detention facility.
I didn’t learn any of this until my mother called.
“Ryan’s been arrested.”
“What?”
“And Lily’s being detained.”
I stood up so quickly I knocked over my chair.
Emma was sitting across the room reading.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The police went to their apartment. They found weed, and immigration discovered Lily overstayed her visa.”
Emma looked at me for several seconds.
Then she said, “Yeah. I know.”
My stomach tightened.
“What do you mean?”
“I called them.”
I stared at her.
“You what?”
“I called the police.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re breaking the law.”
Her tone was maddeningly calm.
“You anonymously reported my brother?”
“And Lily.”
“You told me you were walking the dog.”
“I did walk the dog.”
My skin went cold.
“You knew I’d stop you.”
Emma didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
“Did you know Lily could be deported?”
“I knew her visa was expired.”
“Jesus Christ, Emma.”
“If she’d handled her paperwork properly, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“You did this because you hate her.”
“I did it because they sit around smoking illegal drugs while she’s living here illegally.”
“You were jealous.”
“Maybe I was tired of watching two irresponsible adults do whatever they pleased while everyone else followed the rules.”
I paced across the room.
Ryan was facing criminal charges. Lily was sitting in an immigration facility. Depending on the ruling, she could be removed from Denmark and barred from returning for years.
Their marriage might be forced into long-distance limbo.
And my wife had started it with one phone call.
“Do you feel sorry at all?”
Emma looked at me.
“No.”
That answer frightened me more than anything else.
Then she said something even worse.
“If Lily hadn’t been stupid enough to break the law, I couldn’t have done anything to her.”
I stopped pacing.
For the first time in eight years, I looked at my wife and wondered whether I truly knew who she was.
