Jessie

From the moment I met you, I did not like you. You talked over my sister, and you were rude to our waitress. I've always felt that you can get a good idea what kind of person somebody really is by watching how they treat waiters and waitresses, and I had you pegged from the first "Really?" you muttered, your eyes rolled into the back of your head at the poor girl's mispronunciation of "aioli."

Then my sister told us she was pregnant, and we all breathed a collective sigh of resignation - we were stuck with you.

You finally married her after kid number two, and as bad as you were before, you managed to get worse.

Only now that you've shown signs of being physically abusive is she finally telling us everything that's been going on. You are incredibly cruel. Emotionally manipulative. You use her children as a shield, threatening her with loss of custody if she gets lawyers involved (and now that she has, you're telling her to "grow up" and that you want to "work this out on our own").

You stopped paying into your own retirement fund before you were married so that you wouldn't have to give her anything in the divorce you were always planning on getting.

You are much too fat for someone who goes to the gym six days a week - though from what I hear, you spend half your time there trying to balance your phone in just the right position to shoot videos of yourself working out for Instagram, so maybe that's all there is to it. 

Oh yes, we have eyes on you. You are not dumb, but you are not nearly as clever as you think you are. 

Every time I hear about something new you did or said, my mind snaps back to the stories my mom reluctantly told us about her psychotic first husband. About what it took for her to finally say "no more," and about the bad things that mysteriously started happening to him just after that. The car that was burned to cinders in front of his office. The random bottle to the back of the head after a night out. The drive-by shooting at his house (just a few broken windows). Things that she always suspected her family had done, but never asked.

I am not a violent man, but I think about these things and I smile. Our family is big, Jessie, and our family is angry. The dogs have your scent, and I'm getting tired of holding these leashes.