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

lightest chuckle attached to it, and I know he’s trying to be helpful, but Alec doesn’t understand that’s not a potential upside. The idea of selling more books because people think I’m a murderer is horrifying. I think of Clara Tomson, the past she had to fight to leave behind, and yet her truth is forever attached to each and every one of her novels. I don’t want notoriety. In this moment, I don’t even want success. I don’t want anyone to have ever heard of me, and I want The Child of the Steps pulled from publication.

But I know there’s a current here, a powerful one sweeping me out to sea. If I do nothing, it will take me. I can’t swim against it, but I can swim with it and at least try to make it to some distant shore.

I need to be an agent of change in my life, not just a victim of its forces.

This realization is so suddenly forceful that it ripples through me, causing me to shake. Here, in this car, crawling the streets of the town where so many lives have changed, I realize I’m doing nothing to change my own. I’m just letting everything happen to me.

I vow to myself that starting now, I take control. I don’t even know what that means, but I’m ready for a transformation.

I never respond to Alec’s comment about my book, and he glides his sedan gently into the restaurant parking lot, where my car sits. He pulls into a space but doesn’t turn off the engine. Soft heat from the vents huffs at my face.

“Do you want to go back in?” he asks.

“No,” I say, then turn to him. I unbuckle my belt. “Right now, I just want this.” I lean over and kiss him, which is so unlike me it’s as if I’m watching a movie. He’s surprised, his mouth stiff, but after a second, he kisses me back, powerfully, his lips full, his mouth taking in mine. A wave of heat washes over me, much hotter and stronger than what’s coming through the air vents. It’s dizzying and doubles the impact of the drinks in my system. His lips are the first I’ve tasted since Riley’s, and the first in a long time where I feel actual passion. A connection. Maybe even a future.

I finish the kiss as quickly as I started it, leaning back in my seat and steadying myself.

“That was unexpected,” he said. “And amazing.”

I say what I’m thinking, without filtering any words. “I needed to prove to myself I can still get what I want.”

“So you kissed me on a bet with yourself?”

I look over, then place my left hand on his arm. “Kind of. But it’s what I wanted. I hope it’s what you wanted, too.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“Good.” I stroke his arm for a moment. “My mind is all over the place, so I think I’m going to call it a night. And I left Max over at his cousin’s house, which he wasn’t crazy about, and I don’t want him over there too long.”

“You okay to drive?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, not knowing if it’s the truth or not. I’m still a little dizzy, but I’m not sure that’s the alcohol.

“I’d like to see you again.”

“You will.” I reach forward for a last, light kiss, breathing him in just enough to unsteady myself all over again. I open the door, tell him good night, and get out of the car. The night is cool and crisp, swallowing me.

No, I tell the night. You don’t swallow me.

I suck in a deep breath, bringing the cold and dark into my lungs, filling me up. Then I release the air back into the night, a part of me forever attached to it.

I swallow you.

Thirty-Seven

An intricate fall wreath adorns the door of my sister’s house. Woven branches festooned with fiery-red and muted-yellow leaves, and it’s even large enough to accommodate four miniature pumpkins. Cora loves to decorate for holidays, if for nothing other than to showcase on social media. This is one of her Thanksgiving decorations, and many more are inside. Artificial cheer.

I knock, and when no one hears me, I walk in.

I had a sitter lined up who canceled at the last moment, so I asked Cora if Max could hang out with Willow for a few hours. I almost canceled plans with Alec rather than rely on Cora but then figured it would be good to make another attempt, a soft approach at establishing some kind of normal family relations.

Though I’m still not sure that’s even what I want.

I call out at half volume.

“Hello?”

No answer. There’s something alluring about them not knowing I’m here, as if I might see Cora and her family in their natural habitat and not hidden behind plastic smiles and ceramic cornucopias. I walk into the empty kitchen. The book Max brought over is on the counter, a two-hundred pager I’d never heard of before but is a collection of short nonfiction stories about famous criminals. Al Capone, John Dillinger, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the like. It’s written for a young audience, and he told me he wanted to know more about criminal cases since I was a mystery writer, so I allowed it.

I stop and listen, hearing some faint noises upstairs. I head up without announcing myself, lightly grasping the cold and black stair railing. At the top, I hear the noise again, and it sounds like someone talking. Maybe it’s Cora and Peter, or just a television, but in this moment, all I can think of is that scene twenty-two years ago when Caleb Benner burst from Cora’s room, bloodied and desperate, stumbling down the hallway toward me.

The master bedroom door at the end of this hallway is closed. I take a few more steps and pass Willow’s bedroom on the right. Her door is open, light on. No one’s inside, and the room is a maelstrom of dirty clothes, rumpled sheets and