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

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“Fuck you,” he says to her, jarring me even more. “You aren’t sorry, and that’s the problem. I’ve known it for years. You’ve known it. You are incapable of ‘sorry.’ And it’s led to here. To this.”

She returns his gaze, wild-eyed in muted defiance, saying nothing.

“You two…you will listen to me.” He’s pointing now, first to Cora, then me. “This night is going to be hard, and you’re going to do every goddamn thing I tell you to do. There will be no questions. There will be no refusals. You do exactly everything I say, and if we’re lucky, we might be able to move past this. Now I’m going to ask you if you have any questions. Here’s a clue to the answer: if you ask me a question, I’m going to have a big fucking problem.” He pauses, and in the silence, I hear nothing from Caleb. “So, girls, do you have any questions?”

This is the moment my bladder releases, and warm pee runs down the insides of my thighs. I can’t help it. My entire being is nothing more than a mix of horror, confusion, and shame. I say nothing, but I do allow myself one final look at Caleb. His neck craned, his eyes angled upward, his gaze both at and beyond me. I can’t even tell if he’s still alive or not, and I’m hoping he isn’t simply because I don’t want to watch it happen. Or, worse, witness what I think my father will do if Caleb labors on. Snap his neck like a bird that’s flown into our window.

But witnessing his death is exactly what happens, because just as I’m about to avert my eyes, Caleb smiles. Not a wide smile, hardly even a little one. Almost imperceptible. A gentle pull of the mouth, a look of satisfaction, as if he just realized everything in the world is going to be okay. That look is followed seconds later by his death, which I realize only because there is a sudden, indescribable absence of energy in the room. He doesn’t change, his gaze still fixed in my direction, but there is no more life in those eyes. I don’t know how I can tell this. I just know.

I turn my head and look at the wall on the staircase behind, to the exact spot where Caleb had his final view of anything in his ephemeral world.

There’s a painting wrapped in an ornate golden frame. The painting depicts a cornfield, and the sunlight from behind lights up the stalks in transcendent shades of green and yellow. In the distance, the sky is black, the color of a deep and painful bruise. A thunderstorm that’s just passed by, leaving the field wet and fresh, alive. And in the middle of the painting, a rainbow. It looks close but just out of reach. A thing to touch, if one could ever manage such a thing. It looks solid enough to be real. I picture it soft, spongy, like a long piece of taffy stretched out for miles.

The rainbow is the last thing Caleb Benner saw.

I like to think it made him smile.

“Cora,” my father says, breaking the silence. “Go to the garage and get a tarp.”

Fifty-Three

November 16

Present Day, 7:43 p.m.

I wake in a jolt, slick with sweat. Disoriented, with a sickening pit in my stomach, like I’m coming down with the flu. I blink. Two, three times. Push myself up.

My world comes back after a moment, and I regret it does. Early evening. I’m on the couch in the living room, where I’d lain down to rest my eyes after getting home from Alec’s house. I must’ve fallen asleep. What once was a threat of night is now a reality. One lamp shines on a side table, but everything else is dark.

I get up, stumbling in the hangover of a too-long late-afternoon nap. Head to the window. The gleaming, sublime view of the white morning snow is replaced by the sight of swirls of flakes streaming in the orange haze of the streetlamp, like a swarm of locusts delivering plague.

I shake my head, as if that will dispatch the sticky remnants of the dream. This time, it took me all the way to the end. The horrible, suffocating end.

And that picture. The cornfield and the rainbow. That part was new, and as far as I can recall, the only bit of the dream I’ve ever had that wasn’t true to life. We never had a picture like that growing up. It was just inserted there by my subconscious, a safety valve to relieve the pressure on my brain. To convince me that maybe Caleb really was happy at the very end.

“It’s nearly eight.”

I spin, almost falling over. My father stands at the entrance to the living room, his figure silhouetted by light coming from the hallway behind him. He flicks on the overhead lights.

“You look like shit,” he says.

He’s in a suit. It’s eight at night and he worked from home all day, and my father is still wearing a suit. The knot of his bloodred tie is still tight and cinched to the neck.

“I fell asleep.”

“I noticed. Your sister will be here soon.”

I’d nearly forgotten. The family meeting. A whole new wave of unpleasant washes over me.

“Can…can she even drive in this? I had a hard time getting home several hours ago.”

He shrugs. “We’ll find out.”

I rub my eyes. “I need to eat something.”

“Or you can just head straight to drinking. I’ll fix you something.”

It’s both a horrible and great idea. Wine will give me a headache. Whiskey will wreck me.

“Vodka,” I say. “Something with vodka. Not too strong.”

“Okay.”

I move into the kitchen, aware I’m barefoot. Open the refrigerator door and look at everything in there. The only reason it’s even stocked is because of Abril, and I scour the offerings of leftovers. What would be appealing on most days creates zero desire in me now. I shut the door, knowing