Chapter Forty-One
Afterward, Helen and Isaac rolled apart, and as she caught her breath, she became acutely aware that she was just down the
hall from her sleeping husband. The anger had drained away, now replaced with a feeling of satisfaction unlike any she’d ever
felt before. It was dark and shadowy and strange. This was how villains were made.
Helen looked over at Isaac. He was lying on his back, body relaxed, having found his own release shortly after hers, eyes
on the ceiling. She still tasted desire in her mouth, but it was an ambivalent kind now, mixed with shame.
She sat up, and he looked at her and smiled lazily. She pulled her nightgown down over her thighs. The silk was terribly wrinkled
from being shoved into a mess above her waist and pressed between their bodies. She didn’t know where her underwear had landed.
They weren’t among the twisted rumple of sheets.
Helen stood up but she didn’t see her underwear on the floor next to the bed either. Her eyes roamed the dark space, then
saw Isaac was pointing to the far side of the room. She went around the bed and found them on the floor near the wall.
As she pulled them on, she didn’t look at him. Then she smoothed the silk of her nightgown but it was useless. She gave him a quick smile before starting toward the door.
He pushed himself upright and whispered, “Come here.”
She stopped. “What?”
“Come here.”
So she went to the edge of the bed, and he grasped the front of her nightgown and pulled her down for a kiss.
Kissing him felt different to her now that she knew what it was like to have him inside her, and the softness of his lips
and taste of him filled her with a new wave of longing. If she weren’t feeling so anxious about what had just happened and
what it meant for her and her marriage, if she were just operating on desire alone, she would have crawled back on top of
him. But instead, she pulled away from the kiss. “I have to go.”
And she left.
Helen didn’t return to her bedroom that night. She couldn’t sleep next to Wade after what she had done. She wrapped herself
in a blanket from the couch and fell asleep there.
In the morning, she awoke to Wade’s hands shaking her. He stood over her with a grim expression. “What are you doing out here?”
She looked up into his eyes and felt a wave of guilt. She thought, I’m definitely the villain now.
“I fell asleep reading,” she said.
Wade looked down at the Edgar Allan Poe book on the coffee table. Before curling up on the couch, Helen had set it there to
support her cover story.
“Why is there a bloody towel in the kitchen?”
“Oh.” She had forgotten to tend to the hand towel. “I cut my leg when I went outside. I thought I heard something in the shed.”
She lifted the blanket to show him the cut on her shin. It was already starting to scab over.
Wade shook his head. In his mind, more nonsense. “Do you know where my coat is?”
The wolves took it. “No.”
Wade stomped out of the house, and Helen sat up, absorbing the silence.
After a moment, the guest room door opened, and Isaac emerged. He was wearing the clean work clothes she had given him yesterday.
Wade’s clothes. That seemed very wrong now.
As Isaac walked down the hall toward her, he stared at her. She stared back, not blinking, not smiling, but simply marveling
at the fact that hours earlier she had let this man own her body. As he passed through the living room, his eyes never left
hers and then he was gone too. The sound of the front door closing echoed through the house.
Helen heard the truck start outside and listened as it pulled away. How absurd that Wade had just waited in the truck for
Isaac. That was just more proof he’d been lying to her this entire time when he said that Isaac was a ghost. Who waited in
their truck for a ghost to ride shotgun with them?
Isaac sure hadn’t felt like a ghost last night. Helen had been unable to read his expression as he left the house just now,
but she too had been expressionless. She didn’t know what she wanted or expected from him. Nothing, perhaps. If anything,
she simply felt relief that the house was empty right now, so she could be alone. She had a lot of thinking to do.
First, though, she needed to do some laundry. Helen rose from the couch and went to the door of the guest room. Isaac had
opened the curtains, and morning light was streaming into the room. The bed was still a twisted mess of blankets. Every other
morning, he had neatly made his bed. This could only be a message to her.
Perhaps an indictment: You did this. You are disgraceful.
Perhaps a celebration: We did this. It was divine.
Or perhaps an invitation: Come back to me.
She walked to the bed and flipped back the blanket and top sheet. She looked down at the streak of blood she’d left across the white linen and felt a tightness in her throat. Laundry soap may or may not get the blood out. Some stains were forever. She’d just have to do her best.
The men came home late that evening, so much later than usual. Helen was sitting by the burning fireplace when the brief sweep
of headlights lit up the living room window. A clothesline was strung up in front of the fireplace, attached to nails driven
into two corners of the room, and the drying bed sheet hung from it. The day had been cold and full of rain showers, which
meant Helen’s clothesline outside was useless. She hoped Wade didn’t question why she’d washed the sheets from the guest room
or ask about the faded red stain.
All day as she did chores, Helen had been able to think about what she had done and where she should go from here. She had
reached no conclusions, so eventually she’d stopped thinking so hard and instead trudged through the rest of the day with
her head down, feeling the walls spying on her. They knew too much.
Warily, she now stood and walked into the kitchen to greet the men. She hadn’t made dinner because there was so little food
left in the house, and because she couldn’t imagine the three of them sitting around the dinner table together. What had previously
been uncomfortable now seemed unfathomable.
The front door opened, and Wade and Isaac entered, carrying several bags of food. Isaac gave Helen an apologetic expression
as he set his bags on the kitchen table.
She turned to Wade. “You went into town.” The accusation was apparent in her voice.
“Yeah, I told you I was going to.” Wade set his bags down. “We needed food.”
“We used to go into town every month together.”
Wade shook his head. “It wasn’t a joyride, Helen. It was an errand so we could eat.”
“You know I need to call my mother. I’m sure she wonders how I am.”
“You said your mother’s tedious.”
“So?”
“So that’s what you said,” Wade said in a dismissive tone.
“So what if I said she’s tedious? She’s my mother. I’m allowed to think whatever I want about her and still want to talk to
her! Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts!”
Wade glanced at Isaac. He didn’t like that Helen was challenging him in front of his brother. More evidence that Wade knew
Isaac wasn’t a ghost. Nobody cared about a ghost’s opinion of their marriage dynamic.
God, her husband was a liar. This is what happened when you married a man after knowing him for only three months and then
you moved far away from every person you’d ever loved. One day you woke up and realized he was a liar and you were a fool.
Wade shrugged. “Isaac said you told him you didn’t want to go into town.”
Helen drew in a sharp breath and looked at Isaac. He said nothing, just held her gaze, and she suddenly felt he was toying
with her somehow too.
“Have fun making dinner,” Helen said, and she walked out of the room.