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

I don’t need a stranger in here milling about my things.” She lifted her glass and drained the rest in a gulp. “Those people are all thieves.”

“That’s just not true.”

“Shh, shh,” she scolded him. “No more talk of that tonight. I’m going to sleep.” She rose from her chair and Colin moved off the bed, allowing her to stumble into it. He thought of the lipstick smears sure to accumulate on her pillow throughout the night.

His mother pulled the covers up to her chin, closed her eyes, and soon became perfectly still, her breaths so shallow as to be unnoticeable. With her eyes closed, hair brushed, lipstick on, and arms at her side, she looked prepped for a casket viewing.

Colin tried to push the thought away but found it heavy and unyielding. He leaned down and gave his mother a peck on her forehead.

“Good night,” he whispered.

As Colin turned to leave the house and return to the comfort of his wife, his mother said, “Good night, Thomas.”

Colin stilled, unprepared to hear his father’s name, then accepting it as the next phase of his mother’s mental deterioration.

Everything crumbles.

Six

Bury, New Hampshire

“Wow, Cora.”

It’s all I can think to say as my sister lets herself in the front door of my father’s house, followed by Peter and Willow. Nine more years hasn’t aged her. Cora’s beauty is perfectly embalmed.

“Rose!” Her excited voice sounds forced, and as I move in to hug her, I vow not to be so cynical, that maybe she is happy I’m here. But if she feels how I do, then she’s a wonderful bullshit artist. Nine years is a long time for sisters to go without seeing each other. Now it feels too short.

Cora’s embrace is delicate, as if there’s a Fabergé egg between us. She smells the way a summer afternoon in the Hamptons must.

She pulls back but keeps her hands on my shoulders, studying me. She isn’t even preserved—I think she’s aging in reverse. She’s thirty-nine but could be twenty-five and, now that I think of it, reminds me a lot of the blonds my father always favored.

“Did you dye your hair since I last saw you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Oh. It looks less red. More dull, I guess.”

This is Cora.

“Well, thanks.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that, silly. You look beautiful as always, Baby Sister. I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

Yes, you can, I think. And I’m sure you’re not happy I’m invading your little world now.

I think about the placement of her hands on my shoulders and how I would react if she were attacking me. I have these thoughts from time to time, about how I would physically control a situation if I had to. I’ve taken enough self-defense classes over the years that my mind can shift into a defensive mode when someone touches me.

Parry away Cora’s right arm, then seize her left hand and bend it backward toward her wrist. The pain will force her to her knees. Then finish her off with a swift knee to the bridge of her nose.

I don’t want to think these things. I want to love Cora.

Growing up, we were fiercely different in our personalities: she was always more feminine, preferring dolls and dresses, whereas I liked video games and sweatpants. In high school, she was a cheerleader and I played soccer. The boys drooled over her, as she inherited my mother’s Grace Kelly looks. I inherited my looks from god-knows-whom and was the fiery, freckled redhead who looked like she’d start a bar fight, given the opportunity.

Cora and I were closest before she turned ten. Then our closeness diminished, year by year, as she grew into her own world and I sought out mine. Whatever affection we still had for each other disappeared in the course of one night, a long time ago.

Tonight, she and her family have come for dinner, and as I look at Cora in the foyer of our childhood home, I wonder if any of that affection will ever come back. The probability is low.

Cora removes her hands and whisks past me. Her husband, Peter, is close behind, carrying a bottle of red wine. Nature, grooming products, and likely Botox have finely sculpted Peter into the perfect accessory for my sister. He looks like one of those Scandinavian actors trying to play an everyman role but looking a bit too perfect to be ordinary.

I don’t have anything against Peter other than he’s enchanted with my sister, but admittedly, that’s a pretty big character flaw. Truth is, I hardly know him, and I can only imagine what she says to him about me.

We don’t hug, but Peter gives me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Like Cora, he smells amazing.

My niece enters the house last. I see photos of her from time to time on Cora’s social-media accounts, and Willow has developed into a frail-looking, sinewy, pale teen who mothers fear and fashion editors love. Her beauty is striking, despite the fact that she’d likely snap in two if the wind picked up.

“Willow, you’ve grown so much,” I say.

Willow lets me hug her, which is as satisfying as embracing a corpse. Like mother, like daughter.

“I was, like, four when I last saw you,” she says. “So, yeah. I’ve grown.”

I call out for Max, who shuffles his way down the winding staircase to reacquaint himself with the Yates side of the family. The McKay side is entrenched in Arizona, where Max’s paternal grandparents are slowly declining in an assisted-living facility. They came to their son’s funeral, and I never saw either of them cry, as if the death of their firstborn at the age of thirty-nine was almost expected.

I look at my boy, who suddenly appears so out of place and alone, like a stray dog spending its first night in a shelter.

Max mutters hi to everyone but avoids physical contact, and no one but Cora even attempts. She gets within a foot before she realizes his arms are staying at his sides,