Chapter Eighteen
Isaac propped his arm above his head and leaned into the doorframe. “I had a long day traveling. I don’t want to be presumptuous,
but is it okay if I crash here for the night?”
He looked as alive to Helen as any breathing man she’d ever seen.
“Of course it’s okay,” she said. “I’ll show you the guest room.”
Isaac nodded graciously and stepped back into the hallway. As she followed him out the door, Wade shot her a look.
Helen led Isaac down the hall, back in the direction of the living room and into a darkened guest bedroom on the opposite
side of the hall from Helen and Wade’s room. The guest room had no electricity wired into it, and it held a queen-size bed,
a small dresser, and a wooden desk and desk chair. A notebook, pencils, several candles, and a box of matches sat on top of
the desk. Next to the desk, there was a narrow clothes closet.
Helen didn’t know why Wade had even brought an extra bed here. Last month, she had put forward the idea of hosting her parents
for Christmas—Someone should use the bed, right?
—but Wade had said it was a bad idea. Her parents would be bored, and she’d have to entertain them the entire time.
“Maybe we should spend Christmas in Seattle then?” she’d suggested.
She hadn’t really wanted to go to Seattle.
The idea of returning to the city was too overwhelming, but she thought the suggestion might push him to reconsider letting her parents spend the holidays with them.
But he’d just scoffed and said, “Why would we want to spend the holiday in a city full of smog and crime?”
Helen felt she was the rightful owner of any feelings about crime in that city, and if anyone had the right to resist returning
there for that reason, it was her. Sometimes it seemed Wade wasn’t even aware of the words he spoke.
So she really wasn’t sure who this guest bed was for then. She often considered sleeping in it herself, but she suspected
that would upset Wade. So every night the guest bed sat empty, with the pretty pink and yellow quilt tucked neatly at the
corners.
Helen struck a match and lit the largest of the candles.
“The bedding is clean, but . . .” She trailed off. “I should change out the top blanket.”
“Why?” Isaac seemed genuinely curious.
She gently hit her hand on the top of the quilt, and in the candlelight, little dust bunnies rose up.
“Oh, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ve been sleeping under the stars most nights. This is downright luxurious.”
“There are extra blankets here,” Helen said, turning to the closet. “Let’s just swap it out, and if you get cold . . .”
She parted the clothing on the hangers, a jumble of extra pants and shirts, then stumbled backward in terror. A knife slashed
out at her, making a terrible sound as it sliced the air. She felt it hiss by the front of her chest, its glittering blade
missing by millimeters.
Helen’s teeth snapped together as she slammed back into Isaac.
“Woah,” he said, steadying her.
Heartbeat still wild, mind still racing, she shook her head. Already, the knife that had ripped through the air in front of her had turned into a shadowy and vague perception, not something truly there.
Isaac asked, “Are you okay?”
Breathless, Helen clutched at the front of her dress. No, she wasn’t. For a moment, there in the back of the closet, she had
seen the masked man who had destroyed everything that fateful night in Seattle.
“What is it?” Isaac’s hands moved up and down her arms, feather light, comforting.
Slowly, Helen became aware that her body was pressed against Isaac’s, her back to his front. She stepped forward, and he let
go of her arms. She turned to face him. She couldn’t explain this any more than she could explain the disturbing woman she
had seen in the kitchen. Since moving to the farmhouse, she hadn’t had any hallucinations or delusions. Not since the city.
And in the city, it hadn’t been scary because it had always been Tyler. The postman’s face would melt away and there was Tyler,
asking her to sign for a package. Those visions hadn’t scared her so much as broken her. Yes, she’d feared the masked man,
but she’d never seen him anywhere, not until the day she’d come face-to-face again with him in the flesh. But never a hallucination.
Helen reached out and parted the clothing again, and this time all she saw was the back wall of the closet.
“Nothing. I’m just a little on edge tonight,” she said. “I thought I saw a mouse.”
“I scared you when I showed up here,” Isaac said. “It’s my fault.”
“You’re right. It’s your fault.” She said it playfully, not because she felt playful but because she wanted him to believe
she did.
He smiled softly as she retrieved a blanket and a folded towel from the closet. She handed them to him.
“Can I make it up to you?” he asked.
“Possibly.”
“Okay. How?”
There was no suggestion in his tone whatsoever, and yet Helen suddenly imagined herself in his embrace.
She imagined herself pushed against the wall right here and now, and then she saw in her mind’s eye the time she’d had sex with Tyler in the bed and breakfast, the voices of other guests just beyond the paper-thin walls, and she momentarily remembered the way Wade’s arms had wrapped around her when he lifted her in the air in the early days and how that weightless feeling had made her temporarily forget that there had ever been bed and breakfasts with little angel statues outside the window.
She imagined those little statues crumbling now, their faces and wings the first to go.
Isaac was no longer smiling. He was studying her now, as if he were aware that her thoughts were churning out of control.
Helen said, “No, I’m just glad you’re here. It’s nice to meet someone from Wade’s family. There are more blankets in there
if you get cold. Where’s your stuff?”
“I don’t have any stuff.”
She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her that it was odd for a traveling man to show up with no traveling bags. “No suitcase?
How did you get here? Drive?”
“I’ve been hitchhiking.”
“People still do that?”
“People don’t. I do.”
“You’re Jack Kerouac.” She had no idea if Jack Kerouac had been a hitchhiker, but it seemed like a good guess for a writer
of the Beat Generation. Plus she wanted to know if Isaac was well read—the first of many little tests she was suddenly prepared
to give him.
“Yeah, except Jack Kerouac didn’t get mugged, did he?”
“Mugged? You got mugged?”
“It’s a good thing I had my bank card in my shoe. They took my bag. I was mugged at knifepoint today.”
Blood on a pale blue T-shirt.
Isaac continued, “You were actually the second person to threaten me with a knife today.”
A pool of red soaking into the carpet.
Isaac took in Helen’s stricken expression. “Helen, I was just trying to tease you.”
“Did it happen near here?”
“Oh.” He gave her a reassuring look. “No. It was early this morning. A hundred miles from here. Don’t worry. There’s no madman
wandering these parts.”
He smiled at her, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile back. There were people who roamed this earth who would take knives
to the flesh of other people, rip loved ones from each other, and all for what? Stuff. Money. Pointless, meaningless things.
“You don’t laugh much, do you, Helen?”
“I used to all the time.”
“And then one day you stopped?”
“That’s right. One day I stopped. I’ll get you something more comfortable for sleeping.”
Helen left the room. It was that, or start sobbing.