Chapter Twenty
Present day
Blinking back tears, Helen hurried out of the guest bedroom into the hallway. She needed to stop thinking about Tyler’s murder.
She needed to focus on getting the current situation under control, getting Wade to think straight.
As she pulled the door to the guest room shut, a framed picture on the wall in the hallway fell to the floor. It was the photograph
of Wade’s mother, the one he’d brought into the kitchen during dinner. It had still been propped beneath the table when Wade
had ordered her into the bedroom to hold a conference about dead brothers. Isaac must have noticed the gap and the empty nail
on the wall and returned it to its spot.
As Helen bent to retrieve the portrait, she considered the face of the woman who would have been her mother-in-law had she
still been alive. Wade felt this woman had loved Isaac more than she’d loved him. Without siblings herself, Helen had no idea
what that felt like or if it was a reasonable feeling or not.
She lifted the framed photograph, lining the mounting bracket up with the nail, and as she stepped back, she saw in the reflection of the glass that Isaac was standing directly behind her.
Her heart leaped.
She spun around.
No Isaac. No one was there.
Helen looked back at the picture. The glass was clear.
She had to pull herself together. Falling apart took little energy but putting oneself together required so much more than
she had. Best to avoid it entirely. The day had been painful; her unanswered plea to Tyler had almost broken her. Killing
a bird had oddly saved her from the worst, but the sadness of it had also fractured her further, if that was even possible.
Agnes’s visit had temporarily helped to bring her back to baseline, but then things had unraveled again this evening. The
initial panic of Isaac’s unexpected arrival had caused more stress. Then Wade’s tense behavior and bizarre declaration that
Isaac was dead magnified the stress. It was too much. Anyone—even a happy, healthy person—would be bent into strange shapes
from a day like this.
She just needed to calm herself, and then she could help Wade calm down too.
Helen took a few deep breaths, and she heard Edgar Allan Poe’s words in her head: I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of the golden sand.
She repeated the lines of poetry in her head several times as she breathed deeply. There was no unkempt woman in the kitchen,
there was no masked man in the closet, and Isaac was not a dead man. There was just the roar of the shore and the sand in
her hand.
She was fine.
Wade would be fine.
It was October, and next would come November, and then December, and she would turn thirty-four and the sun would continue
to shine and the coyotes would continue to whine. Yes, indeed.
Helen entered their bedroom and found Wade pacing. He stopped, hands on hips, and looked at her expectantly. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened. He’s about to go to sleep.”
Wade shook his head in disgust. “Sleep. That’s funny!”
She was not going to let Wade penetrate her calm. I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore. She crossed to the dresser and knelt to get into the bottom drawer, where she would find spare pajamas for Isaac. She pushed
aside the stack of letters and cards from Tyler’s family that she’d tied together with blue yarn. Helen occasionally wrote
back, but really, what did she have to say? The green beans are ready to harvest. Wade was quiet at dinner. Besides, she knew they were just sending letters out of pity.
Helen found the cotton shirt and pajama pants she was looking for, and when she turned back around, Wade gestured at the bed.
“Can you sit for a minute?”
She didn’t feel like talking with him in his current state, but she sat on the edge of the bed, the pajamas in her lap, and
waited for him to say something. Instead, he resumed pacing.
She watched him tread back and forth. “What are you doing?”
Without breaking pace, Wade said, “I’m working on a plan.”
“What exactly am I doing then?”
“Waiting here while I figure this out.”
“Would you like to know what I think about all this?”
“Not right now.”
Helen stood. “Okay. Then I’m going to bring him pajamas.”
She left before Wade had a chance to reply.
The guest room door was barely cracked and Helen pushed it open, revealing Isaac inside, sitting atop the bed with his back
to her, shirtless.
“Oh” was all she said.
Isaac stood and turned to face her. She took in the large horizontal scar across his torso. Smaller scars branched out from
it. She stared at it for a moment, then her eyes met his. He had an unreadable expression. Slowly, he approached and stopped
in front of her.
Helen couldn’t help it. Her gaze lowered again to his scar. He just stood there, letting her trace his scar with her eyes. Studying it closely like this created an almost intimate atmosphere.
Finally, Isaac broke the spell. “Are those clothes for me?”
“Yes, they are.” She shoved the clothes into his arms. “Good night.”
“Actually, do you have a book I could borrow?”
She paused, surprised. “Sure, help yourself to any book in the living room. I don’t have much fiction though. Mostly poetry.”
“Poetry is fine. Why don’t you pick something for me?”
A part of her was fascinated by the request: This man—a hitchhiker, an explorer, a rebel, a romantic apparently—was going
to read one of her poetry books before going to sleep. But a bigger part of her was certain he was a liar, and he just wanted
her to believe he was going to read poetry.
Nonetheless, Helen went out to the mantel above the fireplace to look for a book in the hope that he was a romantic, not a
liar.
As she was considering her W. B. Yeats book, Wade appeared beside her. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
She jumped a little. She hadn’t even heard him coming. He must have crept down the hall. “I’m getting your brother a book
to read,” she replied, not in a whisper.
“Okay, that’s fine,” Wade said in a level voice. “It’s best if we act normal, so he doesn’t suspect anything.”
She pressed the book to her chest, apprehension prickling on her neck.
“You go back in there and give him the book,” Wade said. “Say good night to him. Pretend you’re about to go to sleep too.
While you’re doing that, I’ll pack us a bag. And then we’ll leave.”
“Leave?” Helen repeated.
“That’s right.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You don’t have a choice,” Wade said. “You’re my wife. It’s my duty to protect you.”