Chapter Fifteen
Present day
Inside their bedroom, Helen crossed her arms and waited for Wade to say something. He stood by the clothes dresser and rested
his face in his hands, massaging his fingertips on his temples. The room was dimly lit by only their bedside lamps.
“What?” Helen said impatiently. “What the hell is wrong?”
Wade looked up sharply. Good, she had his attention.
“Helen” was all he said though, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. She had no idea if he was saying her name like that
because she had sworn—which he hated (at least when she did it)—or because he was at a general loss for words.
She sighed. “Nobody ever comes to dinner here, Wade. Maybe you could at least aim for mild pleasantry.”
“Mild pleasantry?”
“At the bare minimum.”
He looked as if she’d slapped him across the face. She’d never seen him behave so dramatically, but she’d also spent very little time with him when other men were around, and for the first time, it occurred to her that Wade might be the jealous type.
Helen continued, “There’s clearly some tension between you two, some bizarre, passive-aggressive sibling rivalry, but I actually
think he’s trying to connect.”
“That’s not what it is.”
“Then what?”
Wade hesitated, and when he spoke, it was barely above a whisper, and she finally heard in his voice just how broken he was.
“It’s impossible to explain.”
His tone unsettled her. Maybe this wasn’t jealousy. But whatever it was, she needed him to come clean with it.
“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
Helen softened her own tone. “Why don’t you just tell me and let me decide?”
Wade shook his head in disbelief, as if he didn’t know where to even begin.
She regarded him with a gentle expression. “Whatever it is, it’s okay, Wade. You can tell me.”
He looked down at his hands. “Isaac was my mom’s favorite. Not that she ever said that.”
Helen nodded sympathetically to encourage him to continue. This was possibly the most vulnerable she’d ever seen Wade, and
suddenly she realized that perhaps the reason he felt like a concrete wall much of the time came down to this: He hadn’t been
the favorite. He’d learned to hide his feelings, and maybe that’s why he’d never mentioned his brother. Wade had just wanted
to start over where he wasn’t second place. He had wanted to trade in his red ribbon for a blue one with her.
“When Ma died, Isaac was only twelve.”
Helen’s face crumpled at the thought. She knew his mother had died unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm while visiting her sister when Wade was fifteen. What an awful thought. You hug your mother goodbye, and she comes home in a box. In Helen’s experience, unexpected deaths were the worst kind.
“That must have been heartbreaking for both of you,” she said. “At least you had each other.”
“No, we didn’t. Not really.” A muscle in Wade’s jaw tightened.
Helen thought of how Isaac had reacted to the portrait of their mother and how bitter he’d sounded when he’d asked Wade if
there was a portrait of their father too.
Over the last eighteen months, Wade had made little mention to her of his father beyond the “ass whippings” he’d get if his
chores took too long. His father sounded like he’d been a hard man, and she could tell Wade didn’t want to talk about him.
But now she needed to know. Now they were hosting Wade’s brother.
“Were there pretty big issues with your dad?”
Wade shrugged, but she could see his discomfort. “Isaac never pulled his weight around the farm.”
One thing Helen knew about Wade: He was a hard worker, at least when it came to “men’s work”—manual labor and outdoorsy tasks.
She’d always been able to envision him breaking his back on the farm, and she knew his responsibilities had only intensified
after his dad had died from heart issues when Wade was twenty-two. To now imagine a lazy brother in the mix changed the picture
in her mind.
“So he whipped your brother a lot then?” she asked quietly.
“No,” Wade said, and just when she thought he wasn’t going to say another word, he added in a grim voice, “He made me do it.”
“Oh.” Helen was stunned. She hadn’t expected that. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He deserved it.”
She thought of Tyler’s younger brother, Leo, and felt the sudden pang of missing his silly jokes and shaggy hair. She couldn’t
imagine Tyler ever whipping Leo.
“Still, I’m sure it was upsetting,” Helen said. “How old were you?”
“Too young.” Wade fell silent then, as if this was the end of the story. Two brothers with bad blood, but she knew there had to be more to it. He’d said she wouldn’t believe him, and while the story was troubling, it wasn’t exactly unbelievable.
“There’s something else you aren’t telling me.”
Wade hesitated only briefly before he said, “Yeah. There is.”
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“When you and I met, you were in a bad place.” He exhaled wearily. “But so was I.”
This was news to Helen. Of all the things Wade could have said, this was one of the more shocking things he could have revealed.
Never would she have guessed that he was struggling with anything beyond his general weariness and irritation with the modern
world. He made a show of being fine, being in control, being Wade of the woods, Wade of the right of way. She said nothing
though, not wanting her response to sway him from sharing more. She simply waited for him to continue.
“When I met you, I’d just left Capichon.”
This, Helen knew. She nodded.
“In a hurry,” Wade added.
That, she did not know. She waited.
“Something happened.” He paused, swallowed hard. “With my brother.” He looked down, gathered himself. “God, it happened so
fast.”
“What?”
Wade wandered to the bed and sat down heavily on the edge of it. “It was the worst day of my life.”
She moved in to comfort him, sitting next to him on the bed, pressing her lips to the back of his neck. “It’s okay, Wade.
Whatever it is.”
But even as she said the words, she didn’t feel so sure.
For a long time, Helen sat beside Wade, holding him in an embrace, believing she was soothing away the pain of the past. But
as the silence expanded, she began to feel more and more uneasy.
“Wade, you need to tell me what happened. Just say it. It’s okay.”
“No, Helen,” Wade said. “It wasn’t okay.”
Wade raised his head, and Helen sensed they were on the edge of everything he’d been working toward telling her.
“Wade?”
“It’s the reason I went to Seattle.” He looked at her with eyes that were lost and wild, and then he said words that seemed
impossible. “I left Capichon because my brother died. Isaac is dead.”