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

So let me ask you.” I can smell her, CK One mixed with a feral musk. “Caleb was never trying to rape you, was he? You lured him here. You wanted to hurt him all along.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “I think you don’t know what my thoughts have ever been, Little Sister.”

I’m not going to let her talk in ambiguities. “I know what I saw that night, and we’re going to talk about it. Caleb Benner was begging for help, and you didn’t have an ounce of fear or concern on your face. He was bleeding. You were smiling.”

“Fuck off,” she says.

“If he was trying to rape you and you fought back, we’d have gone to the police. Self-defense. The only reason not to do that is if you attacked him first.” I rise up, point to my father. “He even knew it. Dad made the call right there, decided no one was going to know about it. Why would he have done that and jeopardized our family by covering everything up?”

“He was protecting us.”

“No, it was because he knew your story was bullshit. Knew what you were capable of all along. He even said it that night. Something like, ‘I’ve known it for years.’ What was it, Cora? What had he known for years about you?”

“You don’t understand anything,” she says. “You write your little detective stories with no clue what really goes on in the minds of the people in your stories. You think you know, but you don’t.”

I pause, take a breath. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what it’s like to be you. Tell me what happened to you. Tell me…” I try to get her to make eye contact, and when she does, it lasts only a second. Just like Max, I think. “Tell me who you are.”

Cora softly shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is what you’ve done to destroy twenty-two years of silence.” Then she stands, and when she does, she doesn’t look like my sister. She looks like the girl who came out of the bedroom while Caleb frantically tried to distance himself from her. “And what needs to be done about it.”

She’s in my face, my father is seated behind me, and sandwiched in their presence, a new disturbing thought hits me.

What if this family meeting isn’t at all about what to do with Cora?

What if it’s about what should be done with me?

Fifty-Seven

Cora looks at me with a simple gaze, almost one of kindness. Or pity. Our noses are inches from each other. I stand my ground.

Ice clinks in my father’s glass as he sips. “Cora was always different,” he says to my back. “Quick to be cruel. Struggled with kindness. I wasn’t so worried, not at first. After all, the same thing could be said about me.” He lets out the softest of chuckles.

“No,” I say, struggling to reconcile my father’s words with distant memories. “We got along when we were little. We played all the time. You liked me, Cora. And I liked you.”

Cora tilts her head and purses her lips. “Aw, aren’t you fucking sweet?”

“You didn’t see it, Rose,” my father says. “You were too young to notice the differences between you and your sister, but you weren’t like her. Not in any way. In fact, you were so dissimilar from either of us, I sometimes wondered if you were even mine.”

I want to turn to him, to see my father’s face, but I’m scared to turn away from my sister.

“What the hell kind of thing is that to say?” I ask him.

“Just the truth.”

Several heartbeats pass. “And?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I assume you’re my kid, but who’s to know the truth? I suppose it doesn’t really much matter, does it?”

Cora finally speaks. “Maybe Mom fucked some bartender because she was bored. Maybe that’s where you came from.”

“Watch your goddamned tongue,” my father says. “All I know is you two were never alike. I had to work harder with Cora, give her extra attention.”

My stomach lurches at the way he said that. I pull back a few inches from her face, taking her all in at once. “Cora, did he…”

“You’re so simple-minded,” she snaps. “Not everything has a reason, Rose. Some things just are.”

“Are what?” I ask. “What are you, Cora?”

I hear my father rise from his chair.

“Despite what I knew about her impulses,” he says, “I didn’t think your sister was ever capable of…” He clears his throat instead of finishing his sentence. “But I was wrong. I knew I was wrong the moment I came home that night. But what was I going to do? She was my child. My firstborn. I wasn’t just going to let the wolves take her away.”

I take a step to my side and pivot to face both of them. My father stands just to my right, my sister to my left, each only a couple feet away. The door to the hallway is behind me, painfully distant. The small table holding my phone rests between us. They each look at me with some kind of desire. A desire to control, maybe to harm.

I’m not safe here, but I can’t leave. Things are unfinished.

“What else have you done?” I ask Cora. “Who else have you hurt?”

My father answers before she can. “I knew your sister needed my help after PJ died.”

The words take me a moment to process, but suddenly I’m there, transported back to my ten-year-old self. PJ was our only pet. A black cat, long hair, shy and sweet. He’d come into my lap when I would watch TV. My lap, no one else’s. The preponderance of my PJ memories are of him being old, slow, and unfailingly sweet.

I almost ask What about PJ? But I know better. The urge to throw up hits me hard.

“You said he just died,” I say. “Old age.”

My father shakes his head.

“I wanted to see what it was like,” Cora says. “But I didn’t