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

“I’ve stopped caring what you think,” I say.

He doesn’t blink. He looks at me with a fierce intensity.

“The truth doesn’t matter,” he says. “I think you did, and I’m your father. So of course the cops think you did. They’re going to keep coming after you for that, and that’s already led to this Milwaukee detective sniffing around the Benner disappearance.” His left cheek twitches for a split second, the only sign of anger he’s allowed. “You said you can’t change what happens next, but you’re wrong. I’ve spent my life figuring out how to change inevitable destinies.” He leans in and jabs a finger to the sky, as if all the world’s answers are housed there. “And you can only change the future by doing something unexpected. Something the other guy never expects you’re going to do.”

I ask, “Who’s the other guy?”

“Whoever’s trying to fuck you.”

I break eye contact first. Damn it.

“How?” I ask. “How is it you’ve lived your life all these years in this way? You can’t be happy. Not with how you make everything a competition to win. A battle to survive.”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of happiness.”

“We’re different in every way,” I say.

“But are we really, Rosie?”

I choose another path, asking him something I’ve thought of many times but never voiced. “Did you ever love another woman after Mom?”

This jolts him, breaks his focus. I see it in his face.

“What the hell kind of question is that?”

“Because I’m trying to figure out how much capacity for being a human you have. If any.”

His reaction is stunning. Logan Yates, the man of ice, the man who’ll come at you with biting words but no emotion, picks up the glass I’d been drinking from all night and throws it against the office door. It bursts, sending shards of Irish crystal raining through the room.

The sound of it is deafening.

The silence that follows is louder.

Do something the other guy never expects you’ll do.

His squint turns into a momentary pained scowl. Once his expression returns to its normal, indecipherable form, he says, “You don’t tell me about love. You don’t talk to me about your mother. You don’t say one more fucking thing about happiness, because with all my money, that’s the one thing I can’t afford. When she died, she took all that away. Don’t you see that?” He’s struggling so hard to maintain composure. “I’d be happier if I’d never known her at all. And if you tell me the shit about ‘better to have loved and lost,’ I’ll slap you right in the goddamn mouth.”

He’s never laid a hand on me in his life, but given the energy he’s radiating in the moment, I don’t doubt his words.

Still, I’m well past the point of fear.

“If you’d never known her,” I say, “then you’d have no daughters.”

Not even a pause. “Exactly.”

I’m not so numb that this doesn’t sting, even coming from a man who means less to me by the day.

“I have to leave here,” I say. “We’re going back to Milwaukee.”

“What good will that do?” he asks.

“I won’t be running away anymore.”

“But you will be,” he counters. “You’ve got problems there, you’ve got problems here. No matter which direction you run, you’re still running.”

My fingertips dig into the leather of the chair’s arms. “And what would Logan Yates do?”

“Confront your problems face on. Your sister is who you have to deal with immediately. Both of us do, really. Cora, she’s…” He turns and glances out the window; the sun’s reflection off the snow paints him into a ghost. “She’s unpredictable.”

It’s my turn to accuse, the desire fierce and consuming. I rise from my chair, lean over his, placing my face close to his ear. His sandalwood aftershave hits me, whisks me back thirty years, a time machine I wasn’t expecting. Tucking me in bed at night, I’d smell that exact scent, and how specific that memory is and what a narrow window in which it exists. He barely ever showed me affection, but I remember it now. How at one point he was somewhat sweet, or at least pretending to be.

“What did you do to her?” I ask.

“What?”

“Cora. What did you do to her?”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“You always liked her more than me. Paid her more attention. By the time I was ten, you didn’t seem to know I existed unless you were pissed off at me. And yet she turned into a monster.” It hits me that I’ve been trying to ask him this for over twenty years but never realized it. “What did you do to her?”

He leans in, jaw tight, face inches from mine. “You’re too soft, Rose. Cut the shit. Ask me what you’re really thinking.”

I swallow, finding the question hard to say aloud. Maybe it’s because I don’t know if I really want the answer. Deep breath. Close my eyes. That makes it easier.

“Did you touch her?”

I half expect him to hit me, denying my accusation with an open palm. The other half of me expects him to collapse into himself, a defeated man, admitting his guilt for the first time in his life.

Instead, he holds the straightest poker face the world has ever seen and says, “Did you kill your husband?”

The game continues.

I don’t answer. Neither does he.

“Well, then,” he says. “There you go.”

“I don’t want to be a part of this anymore,” I tell him. “This family. This…this life.”

He raises a hand, not to strike me but to touch my cheek, the kindest, coldest thing he’s offered me in a long time. “You can’t choose your family, Rose.” He removes his hand and my cheek warms. “Tonight,” he says. “Get Max out of the house. I don’t care how. Sleepover.”

“What? Why? It’s a school night.”

“I don’t give a shit. Just figure it out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re going to have a family meeting,” he says. “You, me, Cora. We’re going to figure this all out. Once and for all.