The Dead Husband by Carter Wilson (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

“I can’t stop it, Cora. It’s just a book. It’s coming out, and it’ll sell maybe a few thousand copies. Nobody knows anything; there’s nothing incriminating in there. It’s just a story, that’s all.”

She’s shifting back to anger. “Has Dad read it?”

“Dad? Are you kidding?”

“When he reads this, he’s going to freak the fuck out.”

“So you’re going to get Dad to read my book?” I say. “Good luck. And even if he does, he won’t care.”

She’s starting to shake, just a tremor, which moves from her shoulders down to her hands.

“He will care,” she says. “Then you’ll be back out on the street, no more support. Not even a husband to help pay your bills.”

Jesus, she’s cold. “Well, in that case, I’ll need to sell a ton of books,” I say.

Her breathing is shallow but fierce, as if she’s on the verge of a panic attack. She’s still in there somewhere, I think. That Cora I grew up with. My older sister, who used to laugh with me. Play games with me. That Cora still exists, and part of me wants to find her, while another part wants to just mourn her passing and move on.

“You’re putting this family in harm’s way,” she says. “What you’ve done…it’s completely reckless.”

Her comment is saturated in irony. “I’m reckless? Are you even listening to yourself? Damn it, Cora.” My voice is just shy of yelling. “Don’t you understand? I needed to write it.”

“And why now?” she asks. “After all this time, why now?”

My answer is immediate. “I never used to dream about it. I think about what happened all the time, but never in my sleep. Then the nightmares started a couple years ago, and I can’t stop them. A replay of that night, every single detail, like a movie on a loop in my head. I wake up shaking, then can’t fall back asleep. It’s going to drive me crazy. I can’t go to a shrink. I can’t confide in anyone. I needed some kind of…release. So I wrote about it.”

Cora considers all of what I’ve told her, puts a hand on her hip, and says, “Boo-fucking-hoo.”

“God, you’re a bitch.”

“So did your scary little dream go away? After putting the family in danger, are you at least getting your beauty sleep?”

“No,” I say. “It didn’t stop. So I came home. I realized I need to deal with our past. I don’t know how, but I have to reconcile what happened. The more I try to hide it away, the more it grows in me.”

“God, you’re so dramatic.”

“How are you so emotionless about all this?”

“For all you know, it haunts me, too,” Cora says. “But I’m smart enough not to publish an account of it in a book.”

“Yes, I wrote about it. But I’m not crazy. I was careful. Read it again. There’s nothing in there that anyone else knows about.” I try to calm myself the best I can, steady my breathing. “I mean, you’re telling me that after all this time, you haven’t talked about it at all to anyone? Not even Peter?”

I can see in her eyes that the Cora I hoped to find is nowhere to be found. Probably doesn’t even exist. “No, Rose. I haven’t told anyone. You know why? Because that was our fucking agreement. You, me, Dad. We all agreed to it, right here.” She looks around. “Exactly where we’re standing. That night, we swore to each other we’d never say a word.”

“That was a long time ago,” I say. I’m sure I knew all along, even subconsciously, that writing about it was a risk, and now I try to convince myself everything will be fine. It’s easy for Cora to spot the similarities between the chapter in my novel and the real-life event on which it was based. She was there after all. But how would anyone outside her and my father be able to piece anything together? There’s no way.

Still…

Maybe the past should have remained there.

Cora looks to be deciding whether to keep arguing or take a swing at me. “You will not ruin my life.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you did what you did,” I reply.

“You’re a mess, Rose. And I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“You need to—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down,” she says. “Don’t ever tell me to calm down, I swear to god.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I say. But Cora doesn’t even allow me the chance to finish my first thought, which was to tell her to trust everything will be okay. She apparently has decided she’s done with this conversation, because she kicks at the book, sending it sliding along the hardwood floor.

Then, without another word, she turns and leaves, slamming the mighty Logan Yates front door behind her. In her absence, the foyer takes on a degree of warmth.

My heart is racing; anger and fear course through my veins. My body yearns to run, and as I start calculating if I have enough time for a few miles before I pick up Max from school, it hits me.

Running.

I’m always running.

Each time I have the dream, I run. After arguments with Riley, I’d run. After taking the wrath of Cora, I want to run.

Running away. That’s what I’ve always done, isn’t it? And that’s what I promised myself to stop. After Riley died and my father asked me to come back to Bury, I told myself it was time to face my past. Go back to the house. Be with it.

And still I haven’t.

Here I was, thinking that moving back would stop the nightmares. But just being in this house isn’t enough.

I have to be in this house.

So I turn, absorb the silence of the foyer, and head to the stairs.

Sixteen

I don’t know how to do this or what it is I’m even doing. But I have an idea.

I step out of my shoes, peel off my socks, and feel the cool kiss of the wooden floors on my