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

clear shot, he swerved into the right lane, nearly losing control of the car before he wanted.

Sweat breached the surface of his forehead, which was strange, because he felt as calm as he’d been in years.

Sixty-five.

Seventy.

Seventy-five.

The overpass loomed, closing in fast.

How strange, he thought. That could be the place I die. Right there. Just ahead. Seconds from now. Right there.

I wonder if someone will put a cross there for me and if there will be flowers?

Some distant pocket of his brain raised a feeble protest, yanking the luring thoughts away for a split second. Long enough for Colin to force himself into a decision.

Consider the options. Don’t just kill yourself. You have to choose to kill yourself.

He didn’t ask God what he should do. He asked the next biggest thing.

“Okay, Google, what should I do?”

The app’s answer was immediate and her voice sounded different from before. Lower. Commanding.

“Fifty-nine minutes to Bury, New Hampshire.”

Colin laughed. Laughed like a lunatic inadvertently released from forced psychiatric observation. Laughed until it hurt, which was long enough to whiz by the underpass, careening into none of it.

When his laughing eased and he became more comfortable with the idea that he was likely losing his mind, Colin eased his foot off the gas and drove like everyone else on the road. Cautious and conservative.

Well, hell, he thought.

Might as well see this thing through. Got the whole rest of my life to kill myself.

Fifty-Two

Bury, New Hampshire

September 18

Twenty-Two Years Ago

Caleb Benner struggles to breathe at the bottom of our staircase, the wheezing wet and muddled, the exhales more successful than the inhales. I’ve made it as far as the third step from the bottom before I’m unable to will myself any closer.

I don’t know if this is real. I have nothing to compare it to.

The knife is no longer inside him, having scattered a few feet away. Caleb tries to extend his arm, stretching his fingers toward the blade, but it’s only a futile gesture, a waste of whatever energy he has left. The knife is out of reach, and his strength has long since left him. Blood pools around his torso, his back twisted at an angle I’ve only seen on a broken doll.

“We have to call 911,” I whisper.

“No, we don’t,” Cora says. She’s sitting on the floor next to Caleb, stroking his hair, as if simply petting a cat.

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” I can’t stop looking at Caleb. His face. His desperate face. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

“This is happening,” she answers. “It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

She pats his cheek as I hear the sound of the door from the garage to the kitchen open and close.

Dad.

My father walks into the foyer, briefcase in hand, his suit as razor-sharp as when he’d left the house in the morning. He stops when he sees the scene before him. The dying boy not even twenty feet away at the base of the steps. His older daughter, stroking the hair of the victim. His younger, paralyzed with fear, mouth hanging open, refusing to move beyond the third step.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. He drops the briefcase and sheds his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. He walks over, eyes fixed, jaw tight, arms swaying. My father reaches Caleb and grabs his face.

Caleb’s eyes widen just a touch and then he settles back into a dreamy state. He’s going fast, I think.

I plead with my father. “Help him.”

My father ignores me and speaks only to Cora.

“What happened?”

“He tried to rape me,” she says, her voice devoid of any emotion. “It was self-defense.”

“Look at me,” he says. Not to Caleb but to Cora.

She does.

He leans closer and whispers into her ear. There’s something shared between them I can’t know about. But whatever it is he says, at the end of it, Cora does nothing but offer a casual shrug, as if he asked her what she wanted for dinner.

I can’t do the math that solves any of what I’m seeing. Cora’s an unconvincing liar, my father doesn’t care, and a sixteen-year-old boy is dying in between them.

My brain snaps and I suddenly find volume to go along with my words. “HELP HIM!” My voice is shrill, piercing, scaring me.

This gets my father’s attention. He leaps toward me and seizes my arm.

“Keep your voice down,” he says. Then he takes a breath, tries to compose himself. “Rose, there is no helping him. He’s too far gone.”

“Call…call 911. He’s still breathing!”

The hand around my upper arm squeezes tighter. “You don’t understand. I said there’s no helping him.” He releases me, rolls up his shirtsleeves, then addresses us.

“It doesn’t matter if we love, hate, or are indifferent to each other,” he says. “We’re family. We’re the fucking Yates family, and that’s more meaningful than anything you’ll ever achieve in life. Your family name.”

I glance at Cora. She’s grinning.

“We aren’t perfect,” he continues. “And when we make mistakes…we make them together.” He points to Caleb. “This is a mistake, and we can’t change it. Cora didn’t do this. We all did it.”

My voice takes on a rasp. “What?”

“This is us,” he says. “This moment. This mistake. We are all part of this. And that’s why no one will ever know about this except us.”

Caleb releases a soft moan, and it sounds so feeble I’m convinced it’s his last.

“He’s alive,” I say. “He can be—”

“No, he can’t. He’s going to die. That’s a fact, Rose.”

“But we have to call the police. It was self-defense, like she said. We can’t just—”

“We can,” my father says, cutting me off. “And we will. No. One. Knows. That’s all that matters. One rule, the rest of your life. No. One. Knows. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but you protect your family. Above all else, family.”

This whole time, Cora has said nothing. But she loses her grin and nods her head at our father, an obedient student. He looks down at her and says, “I’ll deal with you later. What you’ve done. The jeopardy you put