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

he continues. “Maybe I’ll use my phone number. Maybe I’ll end up running after all.”

I shake the slip of paper. “So you expect me to call this number and disappear?”

He nods. “I do. You and Max. I have no actual idea what happens when you call, but whoever answers that phone will tell you everything you need to do. Their job is to make sure your history as Rose Yates will end, and no one will ever find you unless you want them to. You’ll be set up with enough money to be comfortable for at least twenty years, if you’re sensible about it.”

“I don’t want to disappear,” I say. “And I don’t even have a phone to call with if I wanted to.”

“Get a burner phone,” he says. “Then make the call.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

He sees right through my naivete. “We’ve all done something wrong.”

“I didn’t kill Caleb. And Cora…that was self-defense. That’s not how I wanted that to end.” I believe my words, so why does it feel like I’m lying?

“I know. But there are other wrongs. There’s Riley.”

He catches my gaze, daring me to look away. I don’t. What does he see? Guilt or innocence? The truth or obfuscation?

He doesn’t even bother to wait for an answer. “I suppose only you know the truth about your husband. Still, Rosie, you stayed silent about a lot of things, and that’s conspiracy. With the storm that’s going to be coming over your sister’s disappearance, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before all your excuses add up to jack shit in the eyes of the law.”

“I’m not disappearing.”

“Oh, no one ever wants to disappear. Everyone wants to be in control of their own fate. It’s very difficult to concede the innate powerlessness we all have. It’s far better to manage your lack of control rather than to deny it exists.”

This is Logan Yates, Art of War, talking now.

“Tell me something,” he continues. “Back after the Caleb incident.”

“It was more than a fucking incident, Dad.”

He waves this off. “The day after the incident, your sister was questioned. Here. In this house. What do you remember?”

I think back, but it’s like trying to discern shapes through foot-thick glass. “It’s blurry.”

“You were nearly catatonic. I cut Cora’s interview off before it was over, and I thanked god the cop didn’t talk to you. At one point, you ran off to the bathroom and vomited.”

That I remember.

“I yelled at the detective,” he says, “complaining he was harassing my daughter after she was already upset about the disappearance of a classmate. He backed off because, well, let’s face it, I’ve always been good at intimidation. But I thought he’d be back, which is the reason I set up those three phone numbers to begin with.”

“But the cops didn’t come back.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I think I overestimated how guilty your sister looked during her interview. No, he didn’t come back. But murder never goes away. Not ever.”

The word murder crawls all over my skin, looking for an opening to get deeper inside.

“But now I think we have run out of time and luck,” he says. “If you want a chance to be free, you need to make that call.”

Silence settles. Here we are, looking at each other, daughter and father, and I feel a profound certainty I’m never going to see him again. I can see it in his eyes, and I’m sure he sees it in mine.

“Pack a bag,” he says. “One for you, one for Max, no more than that. Then take the car. I put some cash in the glove compartment. Get Max, drive to Boston, and park in the Central Parking Garage at Logan Airport. Those are the only instructions I have. Once you’re parked, call the number. Do what they instruct you to do.”

I don’t tell him again I have no intention of disappearing. I don’t think my father can comprehend a person’s willingness to face the consequences for things they’ve done. It’s taken me twenty-two years to understand it myself, but this is where I am. However I think I can justify my past, I have done things. Bad things. Worse than some people, not as awful as others. Yet I see a future for myself. A future where I’ve paid for my wrongs and live life free from prolonged guilt.

Like Clara Tomson, I think.

Free from thoughts of the suicide rainbow. Maybe even free from the dreams that haunt me.

And maybe this is some chemical in my brain, some compound the body generates to battle extreme anxiety, but standing here in this room of death, staring at the man who raised me and now wants me to disappear forever, I have a sudden, irrational, and blissful belief everything will be fine. The truth about Caleb and Cora will come out, and it will be months or even years of stressful legal and emotional struggles, but in the end, I’ll be fine. Cora will be revealed for the person she was, and maybe even more of her crimes will be unearthed. I won’t be taken away from Max. We’ll be the people we’ve always wanted to be.

I’m not even worried about Detective Pearson and his quixotic obsession with Riley’s death. There’s nothing they can prove. If there were, I’d be arrested by now.

I could be completely delusional, but I cling to this fantasy for as long as it agrees to swirl inside my head.

“So what are you going to do?” I ask my father. “Right now. Today.”

He looks around, as if the answer is supposed to be written on the wall for him. Then he turns and says, “You know what? I think I’m going to sleep. I’m going to have a drink and then go to bed. Fuck work.”

“Good for you,” I say.

As he turns and reaches for the bottle of single-malt whiskey and pours a splash into the shimmering crystal glass, a little of Logan Yates crumbles away, like a once-impenetrable fortress eroding with