Chapter Thirteen
During the eighteen months that Helen and Wade had lived in the farmhouse in the woods, she had gone out to investigate sounds
in the middle of the night seven times. Five of those times, including last night, she’d felt certain a person was trespassing
and she’d resorted to shouting into the night air. Two of those times, Wade had slept through her shouting, but three of those
times, he had awoken. He was therefore accustomed to seeing her wield a gun, but he’d never seen her hold a knife for any
purpose other than cooking him dinner.
His eyes flashed with distress, and she realized the knife itself unsettled him. In his mind, guns were for hunting. They
were for animal kills and good old American recreation. His wife defending his property with a gun in the middle of the night
made a semblance of sense, but his wife in stocking feet clutching a knife in the kitchen was madness. He wasn’t wrong. He
hadn’t seen the things knives could do to people, the things Helen had seen. If he had, maybe he would have grabbed a knife
too and gotten ready.
“Helen, put the knife down.” Wade’s command came out with a firmness that surprised her. She wasn’t sure if it was true self-assurance or if he was speaking with confidence now to mask something else.
“No.” She searched his face. “Why are you acting like this?”
“He surprised me is all.”
“You seem more than surprised.”
Wade shook his head. “No, just . . . really surprised.”
He walked to the opening that led to the living room and the hall, and Helen noticed how stiff his gait was, how square his
shoulders looked. He peered around the corner, then back at her with pleading eyes. “You want him to come back in here and
see you like that, holding a knife?”
Yes, she kind of did.
“Helen, it’s fine.” Wade went to her, his tone reassuring now, and he rested his hand on her shoulder. “Let me handle this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a brother?”
“Because I never thought I’d see him again.”
“You had a falling-out?”
Pained expression, he nodded.
It wasn’t hard for Helen to imagine Wade getting into an argument with someone and shutting down, letting the wound fester
until the estrangement grew from temporary to permanent. You could fill an ocean with all the stubborn and scared men in the
world who hid behind some idea of strong and silent, and Wade could be the sea captain of it.
She set the knife on the counter and asked, “Is that really all it is?”
“Just let me think.”
Helen rested a hand on his arm. “If you had a falling-out, he must be here to make amends. It’s never too late for that.”
“Sometimes it is,” Wade said softly.
“No, family is family.” She gently touched his cheek. “He came here. He must miss you.”
Clap! Helen and Wade jumped apart, startled by the sound of Isaac clapping his hands together as he reentered the kitchen.
“How about some of Helen’s stew?” Isaac said in a booming voice, as if he were anticipating a long-awaited meal of a famous family recipe.
Helen picked up two bowls of stew, but Isaac was already there to take them from her hands and deliver them to the table.
He set them on the two blue and gray woven place mats across from each other at the heads of the table. Earlier, she’d set
the place mats with utensils and cream cloth napkins.
“Wade, would you please get another place mat and napkin?” Helen asked as she scooped a third bowl. He didn’t move as she
got an extra pair of utensils from the drawer. “Wade?”
Finally, he left the room, and Helen approached Isaac and spoke in a low voice. “I’m sure it means so much to Wade that you
came. He’s just a little surprised.” She smiled. “And you’re my first dinner guest.”
She brightened at the thought. The farmhouse walls that always watched and whispered would witness a proper little dinner
party for once. She set the third bowl and the extra set of utensils on the table.
“You don’t get many visitors?” Isaac asked.
She shook her head. Feeling a sudden flush of shame, she turned to the cupboard to get three water glasses. For some reason,
she didn’t want Isaac to see the loneliness in her. She busied herself filling the glasses and delivering them to the table,
feeling his eyes on her the entire time.
Wade reappeared with a green woven place mat and brown napkin in one hand and a large wooden frame in the other hand. Inside
the frame was a black-and-white photograph of Wade’s mom in her twenties, a beautiful but somber-looking woman. It usually
hung on the wall in their hallway. The first time Helen had seen the photo, she’d assumed it was his grandmother or great-grandmother,
perhaps Depression-era because there was something hungry and haunted in the woman’s eyes. But no, it was just a studio portrait,
printed in black and white as an artistic choice, and whatever was starving his mother had nothing to do with food.
Wade set the extra place mat and napkin on the table and laid the framed photo next to it. Isaac sat down, studying the portrait, and Wade took a seat at the head of the table.
“Ma always looked so sad in old photos,” Isaac said. “Even when she was young.”
“She loved us.”
Isaac looked up at Wade, and some kind of silent communication passed between them. The lights flickered in the house.
“Tough love though, wouldn’t you say?” Isaac said. His voice had a harsh edge to it, and Helen couldn’t tell if it was anger
or pain she was detecting. Maybe both. She lingered by the stove, not wanting to intrude.
“She raised us the way she knew,” Wade said. “But she wanted us to be good brothers.”
Isaac made a noise deep in his throat. “What about Dad? His photo hanging up around here?”
Wade shook his head no.
The whole exchange showed Helen how little she knew about Wade’s parents. He’d made them sound like simple, straightforward
farm folks. There was clearly some deeper history.
Wade took the framed portrait and leaned it against the leg of the table, out of sight. Whatever he’d been hoping to accomplish
with the conversation, it hadn’t appeared to go his way, but Helen was impressed he’d tried.
Isaac looked over at her expectantly, the warmth back in his face, the moment between the brothers seemingly now over.
So she settled at the table across from Wade. She didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten a matching place mat and napkin. The green
and brown of Isaac’s setting clashed with the pretty blue, gray, and creams of the other two place settings. She considered
going to the hall closet and finding the correct one, but she didn’t want to seem fussy, so instead, she dipped her spoon
into the stew and tested the temperature with her lips. “Oh, careful, it’s hot.”
Isaac dug in and took a bite without hesitation.
Wade made no move to eat. He just watched Isaac.
Again, that annoying flickering of the lights.
Isaac said, “What’s up with your lights?”
Wade said, “The battery’s getting low. The generator should kick in.”
Helen blew on a spoonful of stew and caught Isaac looking at her. His face was neutral but his eyes smiled. She put the bite
in her mouth, trying to do so delicately. She hadn’t eaten in front of anyone other than Wade in a year and a half. What a
weird thing it was to put a bite of food in your mouth and chew while another person watched you do it. She could hear her
jaw moving in her eardrum. Was it always that loud?
Helen swallowed and asked, “Isaac, where do you live?”
Isaac took another bite and talked around it, managing to keep his mouth closed enough to conceal the food within. “Wade and
I grew up in a small town in central Oregon. Capichon.” He swallowed and gulped down some water. He probably wasn’t worried
about the sound of his own jaw in his ear.
“Wade told me a little about it,” Helen said. “Are you still living there?”
“I was. I’m passing through now.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Not sure yet. I’m up for an adventure.”
Something shimmered in Helen’s face. Adventure. She and Tyler had used that word often. Plans to go to Europe. Specifically Italy, Greece, and Spain.
Suddenly, she realized Isaac was staring at her. He must have said something to her while she was remembering lost plans.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I was just commenting on how peaceful the woods are.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How close is your nearest neighbor?”
Helen said, “A few miles” at the same time that Wade said, “Practically next door,” and Isaac pretended not to notice. She glanced at Wade. How odd that he was now embarrassed by how remotely they lived when he’d always acted so proud of it before.
Isaac took another big bite of stew, and Helen wished she had dinner rolls to serve. Judging by the size of his bites, it
seemed he wasn’t getting enough to eat on the road.
Isaac said, “I passed through a town twenty miles back. Is that the nearest one?”
“Yeah,” Helen said. “Once a month, we go in for supplies.”
“You’ve been stuck out here alone for an entire month?”
A shadow crossed her face. “Longer for me. I missed our last couple trips.”
“So other than me,” Isaac said, “you’ve seen no one but Wade for two, three months?”
“Three.”
“Three?!”
“There’s a neighbor though. Agnes. She hikes here to visit me every now and then when Wade’s out working.”
Isaac said, “Seems like you could choke on your own thoughts out here after a while.”
“Not really. It gives you a chance to sort out your thoughts and enjoy simple things.” Helen couldn’t meet Wade’s eyes. She
was having a hard time keeping the sadness out of her tone, and she didn’t want to know if he could hear it.
The lights began to flicker again.
Isaac said, “I understand that.”
This time the flickering wasn’t temporary, and after a moment the lights cut out entirely, plunging the room into total darkness.
After only a second, they came back on for a single flash.
In that flash, Helen saw a figure standing directly behind Wade.
A woman in a dirtied nightgown, head down, long, tangled dark brown hair obscuring her face.
It was only a split-second image in the light.
As the house plummeted into blackness again, Helen drew in a breath to scream.
But the terror of it—the impossibility of what she’d seen—kept her frozen instead, and the scream died inside her.
The lights were restored, steady now, and Helen sat rigid in her seat. Wade was still staring at Isaac. And Isaac, who should
have seen the woman too, appeared unconcerned.
She turned to Isaac, the shock plain on her face. “Did you not see that?”
“See what?”
“Behind Wade? I thought . . .”
Isaac leaned in, listening intently. Warily, Wade watched the exchange.
She hesitated. If Isaac hadn’t seen it, describing it to him wasn’t going to suddenly make him think he had. It was just going
to make her sound insane.
Finally, she said, “I guess my eyes were playing tricks on me. With the light.”
Isaac nodded in understanding. “It’s called an afterimage. Your brain can still hold images briefly after the lights go out.”
Helen remembered discovering this herself as a little girl. In early childhood, she’d been scared of the dark, so at bedtime
her parents would leave her bedroom door cracked four fingers wide so she could see the light in the hallway. The difference
between her darkened bedroom and the bright hallway had been significant, and when she lay in her bed and looked out at the
hallway, she would sometimes close her eyes and still see the bright images behind her eyelids for a few seconds. She would
do it over and over to remind herself that she wasn’t in total darkness.
This wasn’t that though. Her eyelids weren’t holding on to images of the kitchen cupboards. There had been a chilling womanly
presence standing behind Wade, yet Isaac hadn’t seen it.
“That’s what happens when you die,” Isaac continued. “The heart can stop beating, but the brain still glimmers with images.” He spoke matter-of-fact, seemingly unaware of the effect his words were having on Helen. “If you’ve ever seen someone die, you can sense it—that the brain is still firing.”
If you’ve ever seen someone die . . .
“Doctors have observed brain activity ten minutes after a person’s heart has stopped beating,” Isaac said.
Helen fixed her vision on the far wall. How nice that Isaac lived in a reality where he could assume that others hadn’t seen
a loved one die and that educating them on the science of it would be a welcome intellectual conversation.
He added, “The genes can also keep functioning for days. Apparently.”
She looked at him sharply. “What does that even mean?”
“I’m not a scientist, but there’s been studies that show activity in the cells of dead bodies.”
Helen set her spoon down. “Let’s talk about something else.”
Isaac had only a moment to register surprise before Wade interrupted, his voice cold and hard. “How did you find us, Isaac?”
Isaac’s response came out friendly. “That letter you sent Aunt Sue.”
Wade tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.
“I was proud of you, Brother. Buying up such a large piece of land like you always dreamed. So how is timber management going?”
“Just fine,” Wade said curtly.
When he didn’t elaborate, Helen jumped in. She needed to get her mind into a better place, and she needed to try to salvage
this bizarre little dinner party. “Today he was out marking the trees that need to be removed. When the sunlight and rain
can’t get in, some of the trees will start to die if you don’t thin them.”
“Ahhh,” Isaac said slowly, as if coming to a realization of great importance. “Sometimes you have to kill one to save the
rest. Right, Wade?”
Abruptly, Wade stood, his chair scraping loudly on the floor. “Helen, I need to talk to you. In the bedroom.” He barked it at her as if she were an unruly child.
Helen felt the heat in her face. In the early days of her marriage to Wade, she had told herself that it wasn’t fair for her
to compare him to Tyler. All marriages were different, and Tyler had been a special kind of special that most people never
find. Comparisons would just make her (and Wade) unhappy. More and more, though, she found herself thinking, Tyler would never do that. Tyler would never talk to me like this. Tyler would never act like that.
She took a moment, then stood and followed Wade out of the room.