Chapter Twelve
Present day
Wade and Isaac held eye contact for an uncomfortable length of time, unblinking and unmoving, and Helen knew she was witnessing
the unspooling of something bigger than this moment. If she had been outside looking up at the night sky, she might have seen
a ripple in the cosmos.
Isaac spoke first. “That’s how you greet your own brother?”
He stepped forward and wrapped Wade in a bear hug. Wade’s hands didn’t quite make their way around Isaac to hug him back.
Instead, they got stuck in the air, rigid and uncertain, as he looked at Helen over Isaac’s shoulder.
Wade asked softly, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. Her eyes returned to the knife she’d left on the counter.
Isaac stepped back from Wade but continued to hold him at arm’s length, the way you would hold a friend—Let me look at you—but Helen felt there might be an implicit threat in the way Isaac squeezed Wade’s arms.
“Sorry, Wade,” Isaac said. “I think I startled your wife when I showed up.”
“I imagine you did,” Wade said, in a tone so neutral that it couldn’t actually be neutral.
Isaac looked at her, his expression apologetic now. Wade never took his eyes off Isaac.
Isaac let go of Wade’s arms. “I would have called, but you have no phone.”
Wade studied Isaac for a long moment before asking, “What’s going on?” To Helen, the question sounded like a subtle accusation.
Isaac must have heard it too, because his answer held a note of sadness. “I just wanted to see you again. I’ll have dinner,
then be on my way.”
Isaac’s gaze lowered to the floor, and suddenly Helen saw him differently. She’d been quick to perceive his unexpected arrival
as a threat, but now she clearly saw the vulnerability in his face. Wade was not denying Isaac’s claim to kinship, and whatever
brotherly troubles there had been in the past, did it matter? Isaac was family, and frayed family threads were worth stitching
back together. Yes, he’d startled her when he’d arrived, but she was the one who’d mistakenly invited him inside her house
and then pulled a knife on him—from his perspective, for no reason. Perhaps it wasn’t that Isaac was being threatening so much as it was that she and Wade were being
inhospitable. She wanted him to stay.
Helen watched Wade wrestle with some kind of decision. After a few stiff moments, he nodded and hung the truck keys on a hook
above the entry bench. His hands shook slightly as he did so, and she felt a burst of tenderness. He wasn’t even very good
at communicating with her, so of course he had to be nervous about seeing his estranged brother.
She moved to him. “Your boots?”
Wade sat on the bench, and Helen knelt to help him untie the crisscross of laces. By the end of a long workday, the tight
cinching was usually easier for her smaller hands to unravel than his larger, tired ones.
“Did you want to get cleaned up?” she asked, as the leather loosened.
Normally this was when Wade would let out a relieved sigh and crack his ankles as he pulled them free from the boots, but
instead, he was a coil of tension.
“Wade?” she pressed. “Are you going to clean up?”
He always took his bath before dinner. When two people lived alone in the middle of nowhere, you could go one of two ways.
You could either clean up for each other and make a presentation of being presentable, or you could fall into shambles together.
Helen certainly had days when she rolled out of bed and felt like leaning into the wild and the dirt and the solitude. So
far, though, they were still cleaning up for each other.
But tonight, Wade said, “I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
Helen was about to ask Isaac if he wanted to remove his coat when she turned back and saw it was already draped over one of
the kitchen chairs, and the sleeves of his black canvas work shirt were pushed partway up his forearms.
“I’ll hang that for you.” She took Isaac’s coat from the chair.
As she hung it on a hook above the entry bench, she spotted her socks next to her reading chair in the living room. She walked
in there to collect them, relieved she wouldn’t have to be running around barefoot any longer, hoping that Isaac wasn’t watching
her from the kitchen. She didn’t look over as she pulled her socks on, but she heard him talking to Wade. “You know Ma wouldn’t
have approved of you coming to the dinner table so dirty.” And Wade responded with a resolute, “I’m good.”
Helen reentered the kitchen to find Wade standing behind one of the chairs at the table, gripping the back of it tightly,
knuckles white. It gave her pause, but until the men stopped talking in riddles and she could get a handle on what their troubles
were, all she could do was wait it out by playing the role of hostess.
“I hope you like vegetable stew, Isaac,” Helen said as she got out the soup bowls from the cupboard.
“It smells amazing.” Isaac smiled. It was a disarming smile once he let it loose, and she realized it was the first time he’d
smiled since he’d stepped inside the farmhouse.
Isaac asked, “Does my brother make his famous curry chicken dish for you?”
“What?” Helen gave Wade an inquisitive glance. “No. He has a famous dish?”
“He only makes it under duress.”
“You have a curry chicken dish, Wade?”
“I know how to put some curry powder on chicken while it’s in a dish.” Wade’s tone was unamused.
Helen turned to the stove, and the kitchen fell silent except for the clank of the metal spoon as she served stew into the
ceramic bowls.
Isaac asked, “Is there a bathroom I could use?”
“Down the hall,” she said. “First door.”
As soon as Isaac was gone, she set aside the stew and approached Wade. He met her halfway and they spoke in hushed voices.
“What is this?” Helen asked.
“How long has he been here?” Wade asked over her words.
“Just a few minutes.”
“What did he say?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother?”
“Did he say anything, do anything? What happened?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t like the urgency in Wade’s tone. She looked toward the hallway, felt the fear creeping back in. “What’s
wrong?”
When Wade didn’t answer immediately, Helen knew something truly was wrong. She thought of how Isaac had walked across her
kitchen, wordless, and lifted the needle from her record player as though it was his song.
She picked up the knife from the counter.
“Tell me what’s happening.”