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

exactly what I do. A three-second meditation. A single deep and purposeful breath, appreciating it could be one of my very last. A simple mantra, repeated only once.

I am.

This steadies me, giving me strength.

“You are,” my father answers, his voice a graveled monotone. “You’re both protecting yourselves now. You’re my family, but this fight isn’t mine.”

My voice matches his, calm and unwavering. “I don’t want to be part of this family anymore.”

“Okay,” Cora says.

She lunges with the blade.

Fifty-Nine

I’ve talked to a lot of cops. Talked to both victims and criminals. Researched my books to great lengths, knowing that no matter how few people may read my novels, I’m giving my audience accurate portrayals of intense and life-threatening situations. What it’s really like to face danger, push through to the other side, whatever side that may be.

There are many clichés said about such situations, but one I’ve been told dozens of times is how time slows down when danger is at its peak.

This happens for me now.

I see the knife coming at me. I have a thousand years to react. A thousand years all crammed into the space of maybe two seconds, but it’s all I need.

I begin my downward swing with the iron poker at Cora’s first movement, a push off her left foot. The arc of my weapon is in motion before that foot even leaves the ground. The blade has its own trajectory, extending out to the side, then circling in as Cora descends upon me.

In these thousand years, I see a math equation. A question of physics and geometry. Time and distance, speed and motion. Either I’ll strike her first with the poker, or she’ll slice though my belly, unprotected and stretched outward toward the knife, inviting disembowelment.

I have so much time but I struggle to solve the equation. I was never very good with math. Cora was better, another way we’re different. Right-brained versus left-brained. Emotional versus calculating. Empathy versus sociopathy.

I can’t do the math, so I have to rely on faith. Faith that I deserve life more than her.

I keep swinging, Cora keeps lunging.

And then the thousand years comes to a sudden end. Her swipe ends with her blade whooshing centimeters from my stomach. My swing ends with the iron poker shattering my big sister’s skull. Shock waves through my arms, a million needles.

The sound is grotesque, like stepping on a swarm of roaches.

I let go of the poker, but the poker doesn’t let go of Cora.

It’s lodged in her head, the fleur-de-lis tip buried in the upper hemisphere of her brain.

She falls, first to her knees. The blood hasn’t even begun to spill, but the opening in her head is clear and irreversible. For a moment, a whisk of a moment, I think how she’d hate to see herself like this. Not beautiful. Not perfect. Yet, in the strangest of ways, it’s the most human she’s ever looked.

The knife falls to the floor, scattering.

Cora falls next, face-first, the impact almost dislodging the weapon from her skull.

Almost.

The bleeding now starts, furious.

She breathes. She breathes. Not with ease, not with comfort.

My father says nothing.

I kneel next to her, grab her hand. I squeeze, she squeezes back.

“Call 911,” I say numbly, not even sure if I mean it but knowing it was what I said twenty-two years ago, when another life was on the brink of permanent departure.

“No,” my father replies.

I don’t argue, and that’s why I’m still a Yates.

I hold my sister’s hand and feel the grip loosen. Listen to her breath become shallow and distant. Watch her eyes flutter before settling.

And then, that grin on her face, the wan smile worn by Caleb Benner. Assurances of something better in the distance.

“Touch it,” I whisper, thinking of the rainbow in the cornfield, the storm in the distance, the sun brilliant and affirming. “It’s like taffy.”

The smile remains, but seconds later, the energy is gone. Just like with Caleb. With Riley. The fruit of my sister is gone, and just the husk remains.

This is when I cry. Cry for all I’ve done and all I haven’t done.

And cry for what I still need to do.

Sixty

November 17

8:24 a.m.

I wake.

Brilliant sunlight streams in the room, filtered through white-lace sheers, rendering my surroundings like the inside of a cloud. The room is familiar, but my brain is so heavy it can’t place it. I stretch, roll onto my side, blink a few times. For a moment, it’s peaceful.

The moment lasts just for these few blinks, and then the horror of memory rips through my guts. Rips through with rusted metal teeth.

I’m in my bedroom at my father’s house.

Cora’s dead.

I killed her.

It’s…it’s daytime.

Think back, I tell myself. What happened last night? I remember crying next to my sister’s body. Crying so hard I couldn’t stop. I don’t remember coming upstairs. I don’t have any memory of what happened with…

I bolt up in bed.

Is she still down there? Is my sister’s body still crumpled on the floor of my father’s study?

My stomach’s imploding, reminding me of how I felt the moment I realized Cora was a killer. I retch again. This time, nothing comes out of my mouth, but the bile in my throat burns like acid.

The aches come alive. Pain throughout my core, where my sister punched me repeatedly. Soreness on my right shoulder, and I remember slamming into the bookshelves as I attacked her.

I reach for my phone on the bedside table, suddenly desperate to know the time. When I fumble and find it’s not there, the image of Cora smashing it into bits replays in my mind.

I’m untethered, a particularly unsettling sensation knowing Max isn’t with me. Maybe he’s been calling.

My laptop is on the table where my phone should have been. I wake it and log in to my email account.

The only new message of consequence is from the school district, declaring another snow day.

I begin writing a message to Alec when I realize I don’t have his email address. In fact, I don’t even know