Chapter Thirty-Three
Present day
There’s something about the hush of meeting secretly in the night. The air becomes charged with a tempest of temptation the
moment the words are whispered: We need to talk alone.
Helen had spoken those words to Isaac in the kitchen earlier in the day, and now she felt that forbidden energy as she glided
down the hallway, and she felt it as the floorboards creaked beneath her feet when she entered the living room. This time,
the floors weren’t creaking as an expression of her weariness, they were an announcement that a much-anticipated moment had
arrived.
Isaac turned expectantly at the sound. It was only his third night with them, yet it felt like he’d been there much longer.
It already felt normal that he was standing in front of the fireplace looking at her books, just waiting for her to emerge
from her bedroom. It hadn’t taken long for Wade to fall asleep, perhaps nudged along by the meds. Until his body adjusted
to them, it would be normal for him to feel drowsy at first.
Helen was still in her dress and shoes, and Isaac was in his pants and a black T-shirt, presumably the undershirt he had been wearing beneath his canvas button-up, but it was the first time she had seen him not in his long sleeves.
Isaac also had his boots on, since Wade was no longer removing his inside the farmhouse.
(I need to be in my boots in case he turns on us, Helen!) At her insistence, Wade had at least begrudgingly placed them next to the bed before he got into it.
Isaac had been carefully wiping his boots down with the rags by the front door, but Helen had given up on the floor for now.
It seemed like an inconsequential thing to worry about in light of everything else.
Helen and Isaac came together in the center of the room.
He spoke in a low voice. “What did you want to tell me?” His hand touched her wrist lightly as their heads bent toward each
other. It felt so easy, this solidarity.
“It might be hard for you to hear.”
“I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”
When Helen didn’t speak right away, she felt the pressure on her wrist increase ever so slightly. Reassuring, encouraging.
“Wade is having some type of guilt-driven delusions,” she finally said.
“What are those?”
She hesitated, but not because she was unsure if she should tell Isaac what was happening. She was convinced he needed to
know, and she wanted him to confirm she was handling it correctly. She hesitated because she knew the admission was so shocking
it would cause a shift between them. His hand was there against the delicate bones of her wrist, and she didn’t want it to
go away. But at last, she said, “He believes you were killed in that tractor accident.”
Isaac reacted, in rising degrees, as he tried to process it. He let go of her wrist, then stepped back and brought a hand
to his head.
“He thinks you’re back from the dead,” Helen said. “That’s why he’s been so strange.”
“So he’s very sick then?”
“It’s obviously not an official diagnosis, but I’d say it’s a pretty significant delusion, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I would.” Isaac shook his head, trying to wrap his mind around it.
“I have some medicine I think will help. He refuses to take it, so I’m slipping it into his food. I mean, I started tonight
at dinner.”
She braced herself for a reproach. She’d just admitted to drugging her husband, and saying the words out loud made her wonder
if it was the wrong course of action. But Isaac just said, “Okay. Good. That’s good.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong thing to do though.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Isaac said. “He should see a doctor, I guess, but Wade’s stubborn, so good luck getting him there.”
“True.”
“You probably need to drug him in order to convince him to see a doctor.” He spoke slowly, half of his mind seemingly in the
conversation with Helen, the other half far away. He walked to the couch and sat down. “I think I just need a minute.”
“Of course,” Helen said, and she went outside to give him space.
Her shoulders felt lighter as she gazed up at the moon. The night sky was made of velvet now, and only a few crickets were
chirping, a reminder of the summer that had passed her by. Those crickets had to be the last survivors of the season, the
ones that wouldn’t give up the mating call even though, soon, the October frost would kill them off.
She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She’d been trying to reach out to Tyler for so long to no avail, and in her grief,
she’d almost given up. But maybe Tyler was reaching back to her in his own way now. Maybe he’d sent Isaac to visit them, to
break up her intense loneliness of these last months. People often spoke of guardian angels having influence over events in
their lives. It wasn’t such a crazy idea. Maybe Tyler couldn’t come back to her in any perceivable form, but he could help
her from afar in small ways.
When Helen opened her eyes again, a movement near the garden grabbed her attention. She squinted against the darkness.
Good God. Someone was trying to crawl out of the grave Isaac had dug. This time it wasn’t a phantom. From here, she couldn’t
see the details of his face, but she could see his hands—fleshy and clearly human—reaching out of the hole, burrowing into
the grass above for leverage. This time she was sure it was a real man, and he was about to hoist himself out of the grave.
Helen stumbled backward against a rusty wheelbarrow. The hollow thud of the impact echoed as she fell to the ground, and the
pain jolted through her leg. She climbed to her feet, pieces of grass clinging to her hands, and looked out at the grave.
The man was gone.
When Helen walked into the living room, she tried her best to appear calm, but Isaac recognized her distress and stood.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Your face isn’t saying nothing.”
Helen wasn’t sure if she was grateful or embarrassed that Isaac could read her so easily. A little bit of both. “I thought
I saw something, but I didn’t. Outside.”
“Show me.”
She nodded. Breathless, she led him through the kitchen and out the front door, stopping on the porch, not wanting to venture
into the yard. Isaac wasn’t touching her, but she felt him hovering so close over her shoulder that it was almost like he
was.
“In the grave,” Helen whispered.
“The grave?”
“I thought I saw someone climbing out of it.”
Isaac stepped beside her and looked at her for a long beat. At first, she thought he was going to tell her it sounded like
a silly ghost story, but after a moment he said, “Let’s take a look.”
They crept down the two front porch steps.
As soon as she felt the grass and dirt beneath her feet, she wanted to run back onto the safety of the porch and lock herself inside the farmhouse.
But she had Isaac by her side, so she slowly approached the grave.
As they got close to it, they exchanged a look.
His expression told her it would be okay.
She didn’t know what hers conveyed. Hopefully not insanity.
They reached the grave and peered down. Empty.
Helen exhaled heavily. She needed him to know what was happening to her. She suddenly wanted to tell him about seeing the
masked man in the closet and the hanging version of herself in the hallway, and she wanted to tell him about the hands that
grabbed her from beneath her bed. She couldn’t bear to give the weird specifics of it though, so she simply said, “The truth
is, I keep thinking I’m seeing things. Maybe I’m going crazy too.”
“No,” Isaac said. “Wade has you rattled with the crazy things he’s saying about me.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Where’s the raven?”
He gestured vaguely behind her. “I buried it in a smaller grave out there.”
She stared down into the large grave. “Why’d you dig such a big hole? Someone could fall in here.”
“I’ll fill it in tomorrow.”
“Maybe I should lie down in it just before you do that.”
Isaac stilled, an uneasy curiosity passing across his face. Was that her attempt at a joke?
Helen saw the question in his eyes and knew he was hoping she’d laugh to show it was just a bad attempt at humor, but she
couldn’t even muster a smile. “Sorry” was all she said.
The chirping of the crickets was the only noise for several long moments.
Finally, Isaac said, “Do you sew all these dresses you wear?”
The change of subject surprised her. “Oh. Yeah.”
“That’s quite a talent.”
“Not really. This one, I had to undo the stitching four times to get it right.”
“You must like sewing to stick with it.”
“I hate sewing,” Helen said. “I hate everything.”
“No, don’t say that.” Isaac reached out a hand and softly brushed her hair back over her shoulders. “You can’t hate everything.”
“I had a husband before Wade.”
“You did?” Isaac’s eyebrows rose, his face all wrong, as if he thought she was about to divulge an interesting scandal, not
the heartbreak of the century. “What was the first guy like?”
“Do you really want to know?” Her voice came out like a challenge.
Isaac heard it, and his own voice turned serious. “If you want to tell me, I’m all ears.”
Helen looked down into the grave. “The first guy was the most patient, understanding, kind person ever. Much too good for me.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
She shook her head. “That’s because you never got to meet him.”
“Did he leave you?”
“In a way.”
“Then he’s an asshole.”
“No, he’s not.” She gave Isaac the sorrowful smile of funerals and deathbeds and candlelight vigils. “He didn’t want to leave me. He was murdered.”
“Oh, Helen. I’m sorry.”
“Murdered just because.” Helen gestured around her at the night air. “Because crickets cannibalize their own as it gets cold.
And men lose their minds and stab other men they don’t even know.”
Isaac said his next words so quietly, she could barely hear them. “That’s terrible.”
“I thought if I married Wade and came out here, I’d be able to get away from it. But you can’t ever get away from something
like that.”
Isaac bowed his head in sad recognition. She was glad he didn’t try to say anything comforting. Expressions of condolences are unworthy of some types of loss.
“Until you showed up, I was just waiting,” she said.
He lifted his head. “For what?”
“To die.”
Isaac drew in a slow breath, the empathy on his face. “And what are you doing now?”
“Still waiting,” she said. “To see what you’ll do next.”
“What I’ll do?”
“Every minute of the day, I’m either inside my head reliving the past or I’m just hovering outside the present moment, watching
things unfold. I’ve found that from a distance, I can handle it better. So now I’m just watching this all and waiting to see
what happens.”
Helen turned to leave.
She got halfway across the yard before Isaac caught up to her and clasped her arm. She spun around slowly to face him, and
they gazed at each other for several beats.
She said, “And you seem to be waiting to see what I’ll do next.”
The moment was hanging by a thread. It felt like the slightest wind could shred that delicate thread, but they stayed there,
locked in the moment, until at last she stepped closer to him. Now there was only a foot between them. They stared at one
another, breathing in, breathing out. She moved one step closer, putting their faces only inches from each other. A long breath
held, like a dare. She felt a shiver travel down her spine, that heady mixture of desire and fear, the stillness before leaping
off a cliff into the water below. Isaac’s eyes were asking her for it, but Helen knew he wasn’t going to initiate it. He was
going to make her come and get it.
So she planted her mouth onto his so hard she couldn’t even feel his lips at first, just the exhilaration of the collision.
His arms went around her, and as the kiss deepened, her body relaxed and her mouth softened, and the kiss turned into something sweeter, and she began to lose herself in it.
The easy harmony of it moved into her chest, yet there was something else in there too. Adventure. Yes, that was it: adventure.
When was the last time she’d felt that?
Helen pulled away and pushed Isaac hard. He took an abrupt step back to keep his balance and looked at her, surprised by her
sudden forceful burst.
It had felt good, pushing him. Even better than kissing him did.
Isaac didn’t make any move to question Helen or stop her, so she pushed him again and he let her, braced himself just enough
to take it, but not so much that she couldn’t feel the weight of him move under her anger.
As the passion and anger drained out of her, the sadness began to take hold again, the hoax of it all.
In the weeks and months and years since Tyler’s death, Helen had felt her strength and resolve and goodness leave her. There
had been the initial impact of his murder, like a bomb detonating inside her, but over time, there had been continued effects.
It was like she lived in the aftermath of a war zone, remnants of wreckage everywhere.
A man named Wade and miles of forest hadn’t been able to give her the refuge she was searching for. Maybe she just needed
to light the entire place on fire. Burn it all down.
She gave Isaac one last look and left him there, alone in the yard with the dying crickets.