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

and stepped out, his boot plunging deep into the snow.

The moment he was outside the car, the cold air taking him into its arms, Max descended into a fog.

One step out. Then another.

He seemed to float through the snow. To the unsafe man’s car. To the man’s window.

Directly to the mouth of the monster.

He was hardly aware of his movements. Or of the sun. Of the exhaust of the two cars spiraling into the cold morning. He did hear a bird, just in that moment, a bird that didn’t escape the storm, a short cry, lonely and unreturned, then repeated.

It was maybe the saddest sound Max had ever heard. And it took a little of the fury away. Enough for him to get the courage to do what he needed to do. To think straight, at least long enough.

Max rapped on the glass of the unsafe man’s window.

The man rolled it down.

Sixty-Nine

Over Rose’s shoulder, Colin saw the back door of the Suburban open. He’d thought Rose had been alone.

Her son emerged from the car, looked first at the ground, then swiveled his head to them. Pale skin, moppy brown-blond hair. A cute kid, but there was nothing light and airy about the expression he wore.

Rose turned her head, following Colin’s distracted attention.

“Max, oh my god.”

“I didn’t know he was with you,” Colin said.

Colin expected the boy to go to his mother, but he didn’t. He and Rose watched in silence as Max trudged along the snowy country road, around the front of the Jeep, then stood directly next to Colin’s window, looking in. Then the boy knocked on the glass.

Colin lowered his window; a chill seemed to flow off the boy and swept inside the car. The kid just stood there, unblinking.

“Max,” Rose said, “you need to get back in the car. It’s cold out. We’re almost done talking.”

“So you’re Max,” Colin said to the boy, trying to put any cheer he could into his voice. He reached a hand out the open window. Max didn’t take it. “I’m Colin.”

“I know who you are.” The way Max said this unnerved Colin. Deep and slow, a boy possessed by something ancient and malevolent. “You came here to take my mom away.”

Had Colin been standing, those words might’ve buckled his legs. He’d come to Bury with few ideas of what he’d hoped to achieve, but ripping a parent away from a child was the last of his intentions. That didn’t suppress the reality of what would happen if Rose was ever convicted of Riley McKay’s murder, but seeing that possibility—right here, right in the face of this already traumatized boy—tore into Colin.

“No, Max. That’s not what I’m here to do.”

“Max,” Rose said, her voice firm. “Get back in the car. Right now.”

“No,” Max said, not moving his gaze from Colin’s.

A few seconds passed, an eternity as Colin and the boy stared at each other.

“What is it, Max?” Colin asked.

Finally Max blinked. And then he answered.

Seventy

I haven’t seen that expression on Max’s face since the moment I told him about his father. Smooth on the surface, a torrent behind the eyes, as if there’s a whole universe inside his head. Galaxies upon galaxies, captured in a fragile shell, ready to burst.

“What it is, Max?” Pearson says.

I’m immediately angered; how dare he ask my son any questions? It’s bad enough Detective Pearson keeps hounding me, but he has no right to say a single word to Max.

But then Max answers, and the universe explodes.

“I did it,” he says.

“What?”

My one-word question falls out of my mouth in a raspy breath, but it’s just a placeholder, a pause, a moment to try to redirect time on any path other than the one it’s on. It’ll be of no use.

“I killed him,” Max says, his voice colder than the air around him.

“No, no, no.”

Pearson says nothing; the words are mine. More placeholders, simple stutters. A primal response to something that here, in this shattering moment, I know is true.

Maybe I’ve known it all along. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, those dark pockets I tap into whenever I think of the rainbow in the cornfield, there’s a spot held for questions about Max. Why he never really cried over his father’s death. Why he sometimes talked about wanting it to be just him and me together. And questions about which of the family traits he carried. Specifically, the Yates ability to kill.

“Tell me,” Pearson says. Calm, like a counselor who deals with troubled children all the time. “It’s okay, Max. Are you telling me the truth?”

I scream. “Max, don’t say anything!” Then I clutch onto Pearson’s arm, not even sure why, but I want to rip it out of its socket. He turns to me and there’s a swirl of emotions in his eyes, but confusion reigns above all.

“You don’t get to talk to him,” I tell Pearson.

His tone remains gentle but commanding. “Let go of me.”

I do. But the rage and fear remain. “Max, we’re leaving now. Right now. Get back in the car.”

Max looks directly at me and says only one more thing. The words chill me more than the air spilling from the outside.

“It was always just supposed to be the two of us.”

“Go back to the car.”

This time, he listens, circling a path behind the Jeep. I turn my head just long enough to see him climb into the passenger seat of the Suburban before whipping back around to Pearson.

Time slows. Before saying anything, I perform a two-second meditation. One deep breath. A single mantra, spoken once inside my head.

Protect your child.

Seventy-One

When I speak, I’m surprised how suddenly calm I am. Maybe this is what it’s like on the cusp of slipping into shock.

“You don’t have jurisdiction here,” I say. “You aren’t even on active duty. You can’t do anything.”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. You can’t just run, Rose.”

“That’s my decision. Mine and Max’s. No one else’s.”

He puts his hand on my arm but doesn’t grab.