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

a moment. “And why would you have to? Hurt someone, I mean.”

“If I felt threatened. Or if I had to protect Max. Or both.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

A thousand reasons swirl in my head. “Because I was always the little girl,” I say. “The runt no one paid attention to, the plain Jane living in the shadow of her cover-girl sister. The girl who left town, married someone she realized she didn’t love, and couldn’t find the strength to leave her husband as soon as she found out he was cheating on her. Looking from the outside, I look so weak.” I turn to him, watching his silhouette glow and dissolve in the passing streetlight. “But I’m not weak. I don’t know why that’s so important for you to understand, but it is. I’m not weak.”

“I believe you. And you never seemed weak to me.”

“Thank you.”

“And you’re not a runt. Also, you’re much better looking than your sister.”

He sounds sincere, but I don’t even really care if he’s not. This is the first time in my life anyone told me I was better looking than Cora, and I’ll soak in the warmth of those words for however long they radiate.

“I’m not saying these things to fish for compliments,” I say.

“And I’m not saying anything that isn’t true.”

“Just because I’m not weak doesn’t mean I don’t have faults. I’ve got history.”

“Everyone has a history. Good and bad.”

An easy answer, I think. Yes, everyone has a history, but I doubt he has a history like mine.

“I suppose,” I say.

He glances over. “So what, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Fault-wise. You say you have faults. What’s your worst fault? If you want to talk, let’s talk. Tell me what you think your worst fault is.”

My mind rushes back to the evening after the book club in my father’s study. The smell of cigar smoke and taste of whiskey. My father asked me what my vices were, and now Alec is asking me my worst faults.

“You go first,” I say.

He leans back, moves his gaze away. “So many to choose from,” he says.

“I’m sure. What, you leave dirty dishes in the sink at night?”

He shakes his head, smiles. Closes his eyes, as if remembering something distant and sweet.

“Maybe I’m not better than your late husband, because I cheated on Tasha,” he says. It’s so sudden and dissonant with what I was expecting that I have to replay his words in my mind.

“She was trying,” he says. “She was really trying. After Micah was born. I have to give her credit, she wanted to make it work, and I didn’t. I wanted to blow things up. I thought I could be a perfect dad without her help. But I was wrong. I cheated on her… I think just to get caught. God, I was so arrogant.”

“Wow,” I say.

Now he looks at me. “You know what? You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to. Ever.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I don’t need you to say anything,” he says. “But it feels good for me to tell you.”

I appreciate his honesty, but there’s a tinge of a stain to Alec now. We are all weak in some way or another, but the pain of infidelity is particularly acute with me.

“I have a hard time moving on from the past,” I say, not wanting to hear more about his faults.

“No fair. That’s too vague. Look at what I just told you.”

“It’s true.”

“So that’s it, then?” he asks. “That’s your worst fault?”

God, I want to open up to him, and maybe my inability to fully do so is truly my defining fault. My whole life is a secret, and I’m too scared to have it any other way. I want to tell him how I think of death as touching a rainbow, one appearing in a cornfield after a summer storm. I want to tell him how I’m so scared Max will grow up like anyone in my family and I have no idea if I’m able to parent him away from that. I want to tell him about my books and the place I go in my head when I write, a soft darkness that’s both a sanctuary of comfort and horror all at once, and maybe the only place I’m truly myself.

I want to tell him about Riley, about what he became in the end and what that did to me.

But more than anything, I want to tell him about Caleb Benner.

But I won’t.

And that is my biggest fault.

I don’t answer his question. Instead, I tell him the things I’m able to say, which is still more than I’ve told anyone else.

“I came back to Bury to…try to face up to some things from my past and to give Max some stability I didn’t think he could have back in Milwaukee. But now this detective shows up and starts questioning me about Riley’s death, like I had something to do with it. Just because there’s a scene…” I pause, searching for the right words.

“A scene what?”

He probably already knows this, but I tell him anyway.

“A scene in my last book where a husband is murdered by his wife. He dies the same general way Riley died—overdose. That’s why the detective was out here asking questions.”

“But that’s just fiction.”

I look at him, flames searing my guts. “Is that a question or a statement?”

“A statement, I think. I mean, that’s just fiction, right?”

“Of course,” I say.

“So that doesn’t sound like any kind of real evidence.”

“It’s not,” I tell him. “And I didn’t do anything anyway. Which is why the detective went back to Wisconsin without me. But now the gossip is spreading and I don’t know where it’s going to end. Max doesn’t know about it, but that’s probably just a matter of time.”

Alec leaves the neighborhood and heads in the general direction leading back to the restaurant.

“Hell,” he says, “maybe there’s an upside. Maybe your book will start taking off.” He tells me this with the