Chapter Fifty-One
In the bedroom, Helen stripped off her dirt-caked dress and left it in a heap on the floor. Wade could throw it away if he
wanted, but she was never going to hand-wash an article of clothing in the cold water of a wooden basin again. She put on
a pair of his work pants and used one of her fabric dress belts to cinch them at the waist, then pulled on one of his undershirts.
Outside, she and Wade had talked about a separation. Neither of them had said the word divorce, but Helen felt certain they both knew it was going to come to that. That meant Wade would either live out here alone, or
he’d eventually sell this place and move on to something else. The thought made her feel sad for him, but she couldn’t stay
with him out of duty.
Helen understood now that she’d chosen Wade in part because she’d recognized that he didn’t want to truly know her.
She’d lied to herself that she was coming out here to escape her grief, but in the end, she’d fully shrouded herself in that grief.
She’d disappeared further inside herself, all the while playing house with a man who couldn’t tell the difference.
Isaac had come along and pierced through that grief.
It had been reckless and it had been wrong, but God, it had been exciting.
Even if it had made her fall further into the despair and the madness, it had also created a glimmer in the dark: hope.
Because now here she stood. Now ready for a different kind of fall.
Maybe this time she wouldn’t fall apart but instead finally start to fall back together.
Helen heard a floorboard creak in the hallway, and then Wade appeared in the open doorway with a serious expression. She tried
to give him a smile, but there was so much heaviness between them.
“If you buy produce from the market,” she said, “you can store it in the cellar easily for a few months.”
“I know.”
“The thermometer’s on the shelf next to the canning supplies.”
“I know.”
“You should be good on spices for a while. Except cumin. That’s low.”
“Helen,” Wade said quietly. “I can handle it.”
She nodded. Of course he could. She couldn’t think of what to say next, so she turned her attention to her baggy clothes and
busied herself with tying the bottom of the undershirt into a knot.
“It’s not your fault,” Wade said. “It’s partly mine too.”
Surprised, Helen looked up. They gazed at each other for a long moment until, finally, she said, “Thank you.”
“I didn’t kill him on purpose, you know.”
Her face softened. “Oh, Wade. I know that.”
“I’m to blame though. I wasn’t being careful like I should. If you care about someone, don’t you make sure they clear the
blades before you restart the tractor?”
In this case, with these two brothers, the answer to that question was possibly yes. If Wade and Isaac had loved each other like brothers should, the tractor accident may have never happened. But Helen knew
what it was like to be haunted by guilt and grief, so she said, “No one is to blame. Everyone makes mistakes. We all have
to learn how to live with mistakes and regrets.”
Wade nodded wearily. “That’s the hard part, figuring out how.”
She echoed, “That’s the hard part.”
After a beat, he turned and left the bedroom, and she knew it was finally time for her to leave too.
Helen’s plan was to walk down the driveway and hitch a ride into town so she could call her mother. It had been so long since
she’d hugged her. For the first time since Helen had run away to the woods, her need to connect with her family was stronger
than any apprehension she had about returning to Seattle.
She retrieved a small canvas bag from the closet and filled it with things she’d need while waiting for her parents to pick
her up: a jar of water, some snacks, cash, a hat, and an extra layer of clothing. In town, she would mail Agnes a letter from
the post office explaining she was okay and that she’d visit as soon as she could. The poor girl had to be so worried. Helen
added a pen, paper, and envelope to the bag. That was all she needed except for her photo of Tyler.
She knelt to the floor and dug into the pockets of the discarded dress. She found the photo, bent at the corner, but otherwise
intact. She tucked it into the inner zipper pocket of the bag.
And then she thought of one last thing.
From the bottom dresser drawer, she retrieved the small stack of letters and cards she’d received in the mail from Tyler’s
family. She opened a birthday card from Tyler’s sister, Gracie, and saw the familiar curve of the woman’s G in her signature, the hand-drawn hearts and smiley faces, the love and miss you so much, Helen! inscription.
Next, she unfolded a piece of white linen paper and scanned a handwritten letter in perfect cursive from Tyler’s stepmother,
Evelyn:
Wherever you are and whatever you do in life, just know that I will always be rooting for you with my entire heart.
Helen lowered her head and sat in silence.
She’d been so wrong to assume that her loved ones had reached out to her over these past eighteen months because they’d felt pity.
In her own misery, she’d seen only what she’d felt, not what was really there.
It was never just a familial sense of duty; it was always love.
She tucked the entire stack of letters and cards into her canvas bag.
When she got back to Seattle, she would call Gracie and Evelyn.
In the living room, Helen considered taking some of her books from the mantel, but they would be too heavy to carry all the
way to the road. Besides, it felt right to leave them behind.
Even though her Edgar Allan Poe book had burned in the fire, there it was now, back on the mantel, undamaged. She took in
all the book titles one last time, remembering how the words inside had once been threads she’d used to try to mend the tattered
holes in her head and heart. Those words belonged here. She was ready to find new words and new ideas to occupy her mind.
As Helen ran her fingers across the block letters of Edgar Allan Poe’s name one last time, she reminded herself that he had
not been all darkness. Poe had once written love poems to his paramour: We loved with a love that was more than love.
As Helen rounded the corner of the dirt driveway, the sun began to peek over the horizon. The canvas bag was in one hand,
and her Zenith record player in its portable suitcase was in the other. At the last moment, she’d grabbed it and tucked the
four records inside of it.
Her thoughts went to Tyler. She knew she wouldn’t see him again in this lifetime. When he’d disappeared before her eyes, she’d
felt the finality of it. It was strange, the things he’d been able to share with her there in the grave without saying them
aloud. It was as if he’d passed to her wisdom that went soul-deep, even as her mind couldn’t quite comprehend the details
of it. But she knew with certainty that his visit wouldn’t be repeated. He’d come to her only in her darkest hour, but he
loved her too much to haunt her. She wouldn’t need to look for direct signs and messages from him anymore, but she could trust
that his goodness remained. And for the first time, she realized she no longer heard his name repeating relentlessly inside
her head.
Still, the loneliness was lodged deep inside her.
Even all her newfound knowledge couldn’t take away the sorrow of wishing Tyler could still be her husband and still be her best friend.
Most women would never stand in an elevator with a man who had rain on his face and recognize their whole world was about to change.
Most women would never get that chance, but she’d lived it. So she was always going to miss him.
It was a cool, misty morning, and as she inhaled the clean forest scent, Helen realized a part of her would also miss living
alongside the wild animals and the mossy trees. Maybe if she’d come here to start a life with Tyler, instead of Wade, it would
have felt like a shared adventure instead of the lonely hideaway it turned out to be. There was magic to find in a place like
this.
A movement in the sky caught her eye. Twenty yards away, a raven landed on a tree branch, and it turned its head to stare
at her. Helen stopped in the driveway to stare back at it.
After a moment, the raven took flight.
As the beat-up Dodge Dart hit a pothole in the gravel driveway, Agnes almost spilled coffee from her travel thermos onto her
sweatshirt. Her dad was sending her on an errand to Seattle to deliver some paperwork on a piece of land he was selling to
some city folks. He’d never trusted using the postal service for important things, because he didn’t trust anything that was
“run by the damn government.”
Pulling out of her driveway, Agnes accelerated onto the highway. If she got back fast enough from the city, she could stop
by Helen’s house on her return trip while Helen’s husband was away working.
Agnes regretted leaving the day before. Helen had been upset, screaming at her to go away, but regardless, Agnes never should
have.
In high school, Agnes hadn’t made friends easily. She’d had two friends, to be exact, and one of them had moved to California
after graduation and the other was in prison for selling weed illegally. Sometimes Agnes didn’t know what to do or what to
say in difficult situations. She didn’t have a lot of practice around people.
She believed Helen was in danger though.
Agnes had read those articles about the farm accident, which meant the visitor at Helen’s house was a dead man.
On one hand, the idea sounded crazy, but Agnes had lived her life in the middle of nowhere among superstition and bad omens and religious conviction.
Her neighbor claimed a possessed black cat tried to rip his throat out.
A kid down the road saw demons in the barn.
Pretty much everyone said the old Victorian-style house that burned down in third grade happened because a local witch put a spell on it.
In some ways, she had been waiting twenty years to see proof of the underworld.
Or maybe it was nothing of the sort. Maybe Helen’s visitor was a real, live man just pretending to be a dead man.
Neither option was good though. Whatever was happening at the house, it was unsafe and it was scaring Helen to the point that
she wasn’t even acting like herself.
Agnes was scared too, but she needed to go back. She needed to talk Helen into leaving. Otherwise, she was no friend at all.
Maybe a real friend wouldn’t even wait until this afternoon. Maybe a real friend would go there right now. It was early, so
Helen’s husband might still be at the house with the brother in question, but Agnes could drive far enough down the driveway
to see if she spotted his truck. She could idle in the trees and back out if she saw any signs the men were there.
Yes, that’s what she’d do. She had to try.
Agnes slowed and turned onto a road that would take her by the entrance to Helen’s property. Her heart was already beginning
to beat faster. She told herself to stay calm.
Up ahead on the road, she saw a shape on the shoulder. She let off the gas, and as she got closer, she realized it was a person.
The woman lifted her thumb in the air.
A hitchhiker.
Agnes braked and her mouth parted in surprise.
Her eyes went shiny as she saw the woman’s face.