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

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

She shrugs, as if the subject isn’t important. “Fine, we don’t have to.” She pauses a few seconds, then adds, “They’ll take her away for a long time. Then you won’t have any parents left, and you’ll probably have to live with Grandpa.”

It’s all I can do not to race over and whisk Max into my arms, but I want to see his reaction. He says only one more thing. Mutters it in a monotone voice, free from tears.

“She didn’t do anything.”

“Okay,” Willow says, her voice still chipper. Then they fall into a silence, and I realize if this were the moment in which I eavesdropped, I would have been warmed by their bonding.

A minute passes and I open the door.

“There you are,” I say.

Both heads snap toward me. Max drops his marshmallow stick into the fire and rushes at me, hugging me tight.

“Well, good to see you, too,” I say, hugging him back and kissing the top of his head. The heat from the fire on his clothes radiates into me, and I melt into my son.

“I thought you were going to be back later,” he says. His voice has a crack of emotion in it.

“I missed you, so I came back early.” I tussle his hair. “Now go into the house and get your book and anything else you brought over. I’ll meet you in the car in a moment.”

“You’re not coming now?”

“I want to warm up by the fire for a second.”

He pulls back and gives me a look of confusion, but I tell him, “Go.” He obeys, walking around the porch and back into the house through the back door.

Willow looks up at me from her chair, the firelight moving across her face.

“How was your date?” she asks.

I’m certain she means this as some kind of barb, but I answer truthfully. “Unexpected. Nice. And needed.”

I sit next to her in Max’s chair and pick his broken tree branch out of the fire. The marshmallow is long scarified, and the end of the branch glows in flame. I blow it out and study the smoldering tip, bringing it close enough to my eyes that they sting from the heat.

“You know,” I say, looking at the stick and not at her. “Most people think, under the right circumstances, anyone could kill. Self-defense, or to save someone they loved. That everyone is capable of taking a life. But it’s not true, you know.” Now I look over and the smug expression on her face hasn’t left, but it’s cooled. “I’ve talked to a lot of cops researching my books, and they say most people, even in those circumstances, still can’t do it. They freeze up out of sheer terror, or their brains simply can’t execute such an extreme command. A lot of people choose to lose their own lives instead of fighting to save them.” I put the stick back in the fire, igniting it. “But this family. Our family. Your family, Willow. We’re fighters. We are absolutely capable of killing.”

She says nothing in the brief silence that follows, and I didn’t expect her to.

“If we feel threatened at a primal level,” I continue. “If someone is trying to fundamentally change our way of life. The Yateses can kill.” I turn one more time to her, and Willow’s face is corpse blank. “And not just me. All of us. You come from a family of killers. It’s important you know that, because someday you might have to save yourself against someone trying to do you harm. Know you have it in you. It’s a terrible, primal thing to have in your blood, Willow. But it’s there. Like a virus. And your mom? There’s a reason she didn’t change her name after marrying. Just like me. She wants to be a Yates forever.”

I drop the stick entirely in the fire, wait long enough to see the flames consume it entirely, then get up and walk back into the darkness of the garage.

Thirty-Eight

In the car, I don’t want to mince words or take time extracting the evening’s events from Max. I need to perform emergency surgery, even if it’s messy.

“I overheard you and Willow,” I tell him.

He looks out his window as we drive the short distance home.

“Max, look at me.”

He doesn’t.

“Look at me.”

He waits a few seconds, then turns his head.

“Everything’s okay,” I tell him.

“But she said the police were talking to you. Is that true?”

“Yes, but there’s nothing to worry about.”

This quiets him for about a block and then he says, “That’s not true.”

“What?”

“That there’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “But they could still put you in jail for something you didn’t do.”

All I want to do is ease the suffering of my boy, but I can’t even do that for myself.

“I’m not going anywhere, Max.”

As soon as the words leave my lips, I picture them permanently seared in his brain as he visits me years later in prison. It’s a horrible image I can’t shake, along with the sound of his forever-eleven voice saying She promised me.

I think I’d rather see him cry than the calculating stare he’s now giving me. He’s trying to see if I’m lying.

“I promise you I’m not going anywhere,” I repeat, deciding to go all-in on the belief. Manifest your future. “You believe me, right?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s drifted to his other world again, the one I can’t penetrate.

As we drive, I don’t repeat my question. Don’t say anything.

Max stares straight through the windshield, his gaze heavy and fixed. It makes me think of that scene from the movie The Shining. Little Danny, staring transfixed into the mirror, just before he starts screaming “Redrum!”

I’m desperate to know how Max will turn out in life. I just want to know he’s going to be okay. That he’ll be a caring, compassionate man who will love and be loved.

That’s all I want to know.

Will he be okay?

As I drive, and as