Chapter Twenty-Seven
Isaac followed Helen into the farmhouse. Wade was still seated at the table, shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Isaac is going to make us something for dinner,” Helen announced.
“Fine,” Wade said, his eyes never leaving the table.
She felt a sudden bolt of unease. This wasn’t the husband she knew. He was behaving as if someone had opened his veins and
poisoned him with apathy.
Isaac was already moving deeper into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, paying no attention to her exchange with Wade,
at least not outwardly.
Helen lowered her voice, softened it. “Wade, maybe we could go somewhere and talk?”
“I don’t want to talk.” He stood and wandered into the living room.
From the kitchen, she could see him sink into the couch. She should go to him, but they’d never talked about hard things,
so she didn’t know how to start with him now. Still, it was the right thing to do, so she went into the living room.
“Wade? Can I help you take off your boots?”
“No.”
A lone coyote howled in the distance.
“You don’t want to go to the bedroom and talk?” She knew Isaac could probably hear them in here.
Wade didn’t even look at her when he answered, “No, Helen. I said no.”
So she left him there on the couch and went back into the kitchen. Isaac was sorting through various mixing bowls and utensils
he’d pulled from her cupboards and drawers.
“Can I help you with anything?” Helen asked.
“No” was all Isaac said, without looking at her, and it felt like both a denial and a gift.
“Okay, then I’m going out to find the coyote.”
That caught his attention. He turned his head toward her, and his lips parted slightly in surprise. After a moment, he nodded,
as if what she’d said was perfectly reasonable.
Helen walked out of the farmhouse, pulling Wade’s work coat from the back of the kitchen chair as she passed by the table.
It wasn’t until she was halfway across the meadow that she realized she was wearing Isaac’s coat, not Wade’s.
Dusk changed to the early impressions of night. It had been stupid to walk into the woods without a lantern, but Helen didn’t
turn back because the moon was bright, and her eyes were adjusting as the dark closed in degree by degree. She heard the single
howl only once more, and she doubted she’d find the coyote or any night creatures, but still she wandered the trees at the
perimeter of the forest not too far from the meadow. A sweet yet sharp, earthy aroma filled her nose. Some of the fresh foliage
was already falling to the ground and decomposing. October was a battle month: new beginnings versus the rot.
She wrapped Isaac’s coat tighter around her. His sleeves went past the tips of her fingers, and the fleece lining felt soft
against her neck.
Then she heard an unfamiliar sound: first a crackle, followed by a ripping noise. Something pulling, stretching, breaking. Something wet. It took a moment before she could make sense of the shadowy image only ten yards in front of her.
By a thick fir tree, a lone coyote, shifty eyes and bloody mouth, stood over the rabbit it was devouring, staring her down,
like it was simultaneously daring her to step closer while warning her to stay back.
Woman and coyote looked at each other, unblinking. It wasn’t a large coyote. If needed, she could probably kick it hard enough
to break its ribs. She wondered when the animal sized her up what conclusions it drew about her. Legs thin enough to rip a
chunk out of, maybe.
She smiled at it, because it was wild and free and even a little bit pretty, bloody mouth and all.
Helen backed away slowly, and the coyote went back to tearing apart the rabbit.
As Helen approached the farmhouse, she slipped off Isaac’s coat, hoping he wouldn’t notice she’d taken it. When she entered,
the sweet smell of garlic and mushrooms filled her senses.
Isaac looked up from the stove and saw his coat folded over her arm. The deliberate way he watched her return it to the kitchen
chair told her that he very much wanted her to know that he had indeed noticed.
“Food’s almost ready” is all he said though.
He’d prepared noodles in a creamy white sauce. Helen hadn’t told him that she kept her canned and jarred food in the cellar,
but he’d obviously found the preserved mushrooms down there.
She went to the hall closet to get fresh cloth napkins and the third matching blue and gray place mat. When she passed through
the living room, Wade didn’t stir on the couch. He was still in the same position she had left him.
Minutes later, when she called him in to eat dinner, she was surprised that he came.
Helen ate in silence with Wade and Isaac on either side of her, each man sitting at opposite heads of the table.
Wade kept his eyes down, but he ate the dish hungrily.
He loved creamy pastas, and she wondered if Isaac knew that.
Probably. They were brothers, after all.
It was strange they were all eating together in silence, but it would have been even stranger if Helen and Isaac had been chatting amicably while Wade said nothing, and she knew that’s what would have happened if she’d tried to strike up a conversation.
The only thing Helen said, several bites into the meal, was “This is really good, Isaac. Thank you.”
Isaac simply nodded.
He didn’t say any words himself until her plate was almost empty and he asked, “Did you find your coyote?”
Wade looked up then, chewing slowly, watching Helen with a circumspect expression.
She nodded. She wanted to tell him about it but not with Wade sitting there.
Isaac smiled softly at her and then looked at Wade. For the briefest moment, Helen questioned if he was somehow provoking
Wade, but then Isaac twisted the last of his noodles around his fork and resumed eating. The moment was gone before it was
anything. She was probably just being paranoid.
No one said anything more, and then Wade stood and strode out of the kitchen. She heard a door open and shut down the hall.
After she finished her meal, Helen washed the dishes, and Isaac dried them with a towel. When she passed the last plate to
him, their fingers brushed lightly. She wasn’t sure if it had been her hand, or his, that had reached across the invisible
line.
Helen found Wade lying on top of their bed, still in his filthy work clothes with his boots on.
His mouth was set in a grim line, and he stared at the ceiling like he was fixated on the cracks in the wood.
She stood in the doorway, her hands still slightly damp from doing the dinner dishes, and tried not to scream.
The bedding would have to be washed tomorrow.
She cleared her throat. “You didn’t take a bath?”
“You didn’t run one for me.”
Every night since they had lived at the farmhouse, Helen had run Wade a bath. But tonight she didn’t want to fill the porcelain
tub for the man dirtying the comforter on their bed. She wanted to be in Seattle with Tyler catching a movie in the U District.
Tyler. Tyler. Tyler.
Helen went to the bathroom and turned on the bathtub faucet, swearing under her breath. Running a bath wasn’t exactly a task
that required great skill. She kept her hand beneath the water flow and adjusted the temperature until it was just right,
then straightened up and turned.
Isaac was standing just inside the room.
Her breath caught and a flush spread across her cheeks. She wondered if he’d heard her swearing while she ran the water. It
didn’t seem right to swear while wearing a petticoat.
“Sorry,” Isaac said. “I was wondering if there would be enough hot water for me.”
“You can have this one.”
His fingers went to the buttons on his work shirt and he undid the top one, then the next. The bathroom space was so tight
that as she exited, she couldn’t help but brush her body against his.
In the bedroom, Helen told Wade, “Isaac is going to bathe now and then you can.”
Wade’s gaze finally moved from the ceiling to look at her. His eyes were still distant, but they held a note of accusation.
“You ran him a bath?”
“No, I ran you a bath. And he came in while I was doing that, and he’s our guest, so . . .” She trailed off. Did she really
need to explain Hostessing 101? “I’ll run a new one when he’s done.”
“A bath is the last thing on my mind right now.” Wade reached for the bedside lamp and flipped the switch, plunging the room
into darkness.
She turned the light back on. “Can we talk, Wade? I’m worried about you.”
“You should be worried about both of us.”
He killed the light again, and this time Helen let him.
Isaac was bathing still as Helen put the fireplace poker back on its stand and considered her poetry books on the mantel.
She didn’t want to get into bed next to Wade. He hadn’t even taken off his boots before he’d flipped off the light. Was he
really going to sleep the entire night in them?
She selected a John Keats hardcover from her book collection and opened it to a random page. “I have so much of you in my
heart.” Not so random after all. The page was folded down to the section with his letters to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne, a
woman Keats would never marry due to his illness and untimely death. Helen didn’t remember folding that page down, but of
course she must have—she was very familiar with it. It comforted her that she wasn’t the only lost soul living a tragic love
story. Across the universe, there had been many unfinished love stories before hers and there would be many after. There were
so many brokenhearted people walking around, thinking to themselves, I have so much of you in my heart.
Helen heard the bathroom door open. Isaac was out of the bath. She resisted the urge to inch toward the edge of the room where
she could see down the hallway. Instead, she listened. She heard his footfalls whisper and creak down the hall and then disappear
into the guest bedroom, the door closing quietly behind him.
Then she sat down on the couch with John Keats’s letter to Fanny Brawne.
So let me speak of your Beauty, though to my own endangering; if you could be so cruel to me as to try elsewhere its Power.