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

soles. It’s only a few steps to reach the base of the stairs, but I take my time. I’m not scared as much as I am thoughtful. I’m not going to race through this.

When I reach the base of the stairs, I step onto a spot about three feet from the bottom of the first riser. This is the first time I’ve stood here in over two decades. Ever since that night, I’ve always approached the stairs at an angle, just to avoid standing exactly where I am.

It doesn’t feel any different.

I sit, cross my legs, place my hands on top of my knees.

Close my eyes.

No, keep them open. No more looking away.

The color of the hardwood stairs is a golden red, the last seconds of a sunset. Glossy finish, always gleaming. I can even see where two of the steps were restained, the color very close but not exactly the same as the adjacent ones.

As I stare, the silence shifts into a hum, a rhythm of energy both soothing and overwhelming. It’s as if I’m floating through space, enveloped in the vibration of all the universe.

I surrender to this hum, letting it take over my body, letting it pulse from the crown of my head to the chilled tips of my toes. Eyes open, ears attuned, and the surface of my skin poised to feel even the breath of a spider, I have become a receptor for whatever signal wants to transmit through me.

This is when I realize the hum is not a singular, steady sound. It’s the collective sound of all the voices of my past. All the words of everyone in my life up to now, stitched together in a mosaic of noise. And these words, some of them are loving and soft, but many are angry. Desperate. Every decision I’ve made as an adult has been born of some kind of desperation, and I hear that now. My decision to leave Bury. My path to writing crime fiction. My relationship with Riley. I was chasing off a desperation each and every time. That desperation would scurry away just out of reach but, like a pack of wolves, always returned, and each time got a little closer.

I don’t blink, and the steps start to melt in front of me. Dripping, oozing. They run together until they’re no longer recognizable.

Deep in the recess of my mind, there’s a realization that none of this is real, but I let that knowledge stay tucked away. In this moment, I’m where I need to be.

I’m transcending something.

I remain motionless, watching the melting continue.

I don’t know how long I sit here, but it seems forever. With each passing minute, the hum deepens. Grows louder. Tells me it needs to be fed.

Finally, I talk. Offering the stairs what I think they need. Just two words.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and my voice is like cannon fire. The hum protests, as if unwilling to accept my apology.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, a bit more forceful. The hum digs into my brain.

I wait a moment, take a breath, hold it for as long as I can, then release.

“I’m sorry,” I scream, and after I do, the hum shatters into the millions of words of which it’s comprised, each flinging off into the outer edges of my mind. Whether real or imagined, the explosion causes a sharp pain to the front of my brain and I wince against it, closing my eyes for the briefest of moments.

When I open them, the stairs have returned to their normal imposing and solid state. There is only silence. A deep, dark, and lonely silence, the sound of a shipwreck sleeping for centuries within the deep silt of an ocean floor.

The silence affirms what I’ve known all along.

I can’t change the past, and my apologies go unheard by those who need to hear them. I can’t do anything to change these basic facts.

All I can do is pull my knees up, lower my head, and cry.

So I do.

Seventeen

October 13

Two Weeks Later

Fifteen more minutes in my shift, then off to pick Max up from school.

I got a job.

I didn’t need to. My father has made it very clear that as long as I’m back at home, I don’t need to worry about frivolous little things like earning a living. But I felt a need to contribute something. My self-worth might be measured in pennies, but it’s not bankrupt.

I’m working twenty-five hours a week at Tuli’s, a boutique grocery store on Union Avenue, five minutes from Middleton Prep. When I was growing up, this used to be a mom-and-pop hardware store, but the demands of creeping affluence (not gentrification, since the area never sank to a depth where gentrification could occur) necessitated an independent grocery store catering to Bury’s choosiest. Essentially a smaller and pricier Whole Foods, Tuli’s is owned by Nathan and Joanne Carnes, a middle-aged couple from Concord. The Bury store is their third in New England, and given how busy this one is, I imagine more are on the way. The Tuli’s logo is the face of the Carnes family dog, a goofy, wide-eyed mutt.

I scan the items on the conveyor belt as I attempt to make eye contact with the shopper on the other side of the register. Each beep of my system is the sound of an obscene profit margin. Seven dollars for a single tube of “locally sourced” lip balm. Six organic limes, a dollar each. Nearly seven dollars for a half gallon of organic, naturally sweetened almond milk.

When I’m done ringing her up, the shopper nods, grabs her bag, and remains glued to her phone as she walks away. I turn to close my lane when I find one more customer waiting in line.

Alec.

“I thought that was you,” he says. “I didn’t know you were working here.”

A thousand responses whiz through my mind, and I end up choosing the lamest.

“Yup.”

He sets down an avocado. A single avocado, his entire shopping purchase.

“That’s cool,” he says.

I turn off