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

The jolting shrill of Cora stiffens my spine.

“It’s a fucking nightmare out there,” she yells from the foyer.

In the diffused reflection of the refrigerator’s stainless steel I see none of my features, just a faint glowing outline. A ghost.

I turn and leave the kitchen.

Time for the family meeting.

Fifty-Four

5:18 p.m.

Colin forwent the shitty motel on the outskirts of town for a bed-and-breakfast in the center of Bury. The Oak Street Inn was charging him one-seventy-five a night, and he couldn’t care less. He’d been comfortable enough at the seventy-dollar place where he’d stayed on the department’s budget, but Colin wanted to spend money. Not on comfort. Just for the sake of spending money. Maybe that was what happened when you lost everything. You got the urge to keep it going. Spend every last penny in frivolity, wipe the slate clean. Start all over again. Or maybe not.

The storm saved its biggest punch until after Colin arrived in the afternoon. He pulled into a six-space parking lot that had been shoveled from a previous round of snow but was filling up again. Just one other car sat in the lot, several inches blanketing it.

The proprietors of the inn were a middle-aged couple, Franklin and Keith, who said they’d bought the four-room B and B eight years ago and invested considerable time and money into renovations and upkeep. It looked it, Colin thought. The Queen Anne Victorian was colorful, ornate, and detailed enough to let Colin imagine he’d walked into a gingerbread house. That’d been a pleasant thought for a few seconds, until the idea of gingerbread houses made him think of Hansel and Gretel, which in turn got him in the mindset of dead children. That was the moment Colin realized he could never escape his own mind.

He told the couple it was his first time in Bury, and he was visiting some family friends. He didn’t have his badge, gun, or anything else that might indicate he was PD. Neither his own nor Bury’s police department knew he was here. As far as his sergeant was concerned, Colin was on leave until he could figure out how to put his life back together.

Is that what I’m doing here? he thought. Putting my life back together?

He didn’t have an answer for that. He had nothing. No plan, no idea of his next move. No sense of a way to heal. All Colin had was a profound urge to know the truth about the Yates family, and he thought the best way to start that was by looking Rose Yates in the eyes again, this time with his own fresh perspective on death and suffering. Colin didn’t know what came after that, but that would be a start. An expensive trip for a solitary, fleeting moment, but everything began somewhere.

Eight o’clock, and after a pot-roast dinner that was surely better than his diminished appetite allowed for, Colin found himself sitting in the octagonal living room with his hosts. He was the only guest that night, another couple having canceled their plans due to the storm.

Colin sipped a glass of port, a drink he’d never tasted before. It was sickly sweet. He managed a weak smile and toasted his new friends, thanking them for their hospitality. One last sip, then Colin knew he’d hit his wall. Sleep was coming at last, whether he was ready for it or not. Beautiful sleep.

He said good night to Franklin and Keith, then lumbered to his room on the second floor. Inside, he collapsed onto a puffy queen-size bed that had two quilt blankets and at least a half-dozen pillows. After a few seconds of stillness, he summoned enough energy to take off his clothes, get under the covers, and plug in his phone.

The last thing he did was set his alarm. Eight in the morning. Twelve hours away. Colin had no idea of what he didn’t want to be late for, but something was going to happen tomorrow.

It just had to.

Fifty-Five

7:55 p.m.

I walk into the foyer and Cora’s standing there, snow melting on the arms of her black fleece jacket. She’s disheveled, a look she doesn’t wear often.

“Where’s Dad?” she says.

“Here,” he says, appearing from the hallway. His jacket is off, hands in pockets. No drinks anywhere to be seen.

She looks to him. “I don’t like being summoned, especially when I have to drive in this shit. I nearly lost control of the car.”

“Calm down,” my father says. “You made it, didn’t you?”

“Barely.”

I’m hardly able to process it was just this morning I asked my father if he molested her. I scan back and forth between the two of them, searching for some kind of link, some kind of indication of damage. How do you find evidence of more damage in things long broken?

“In the study,” he says. “We’ll talk there.”

“Why there?” Cora asks, just to argue.

“Because that’s where the booze is. We’ll be needing it.”

“I can’t drink and drive back out in this.”

“No,” he says. “You can’t. I want you staying here tonight.”

“What?” She releases her purse and lets it fall to the floor. “I can’t just stay here. Peter’s waiting for me. I don’t have any of my things with me. You can’t just expect—”

“Cora.” My father sighs. “Just shut up, will you? Now, get into the study.”

He turns and heads down the hallway and I follow. I enter the study after him, and he hands me an already-poured drink.

“Vodka tonic,” he says. “Twist of lime. Simple. Classic.”

“Thanks,” I say. The crystal is ice-cold; the chill needles my forearm.

Cora hasn’t joined us, and my father and I sit in the two chairs we used this morning. A couple of minutes pass before I say, “Where is she?”

“She’s coming,” he replies. “In her own time. She doesn’t like to be told what to do.”

Sure enough, not thirty seconds later, she appears in the doorway, purse back in hand.

“Where the fuck am I supposed to sit?”

My father narrows his eyes. “You