Chapter Thirty-Four
The teakettle on the kitchen stove shrieked. Helen heard it all the way back in the bedroom, where she was dressing alone.
Isaac must have made the morning tea. She couldn’t imagine Wade doing it.
Minutes later, she entered the kitchen, her expression guarded. Both Wade and Isaac were in work clothes, their coats on.
Isaac’s head was tilted back as he finished the last drops of liquid in his mug.
“Good,” Helen said, her voice cold. “It seems you’ll both be gone today.”
Isaac tried to catch her eye, but Helen refused to look at him.
“Did you get your lunch bags out of the fridge?” She directed the question at her husband, but Isaac was the one who answered.
“Yeah. And I packed some walnuts I found in the cellar. Maybe I’ll grab us some of the canned peaches I saw down there too.”
She still couldn’t bring herself to meet Isaac’s eyes, not after last night, so she kept her gaze on the table until he disappeared
through the cellar door.
“Wade, stick to your plan,” she whispered. “Don’t do anything stupid out there.”
“Meaning?”
“Don’t try to hurt your brother this time.”
“I won’t. It wouldn’t work anyway.” Wade scowled at her. “You can’t hurt someone who’s dead.”
Isaac returned from the cellar just then with a can of peaches, and she looked at him directly for the first time that morning.
Those dark eyes, that curious brow, those full lips. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly as he blinked at her, slow and
deliberate.
Isaac, Isaac, Isaac.
She looked away. “I think I’ll sew today.”
Helen didn’t sew that day, but she briefly considered sticking the sewing needles into the soft flesh of her thighs, just
to see what it would feel like. She decided against it though, for no reason other than she just lost interest in the idea
before she had a chance to get her sewing supplies from the closet.
Instead, she walked out to the pond and stood at the water’s edge for a long time, wondering how many stones Virginia Woolf
had needed in her pockets to weigh herself down so she could drown.
Then she walked back to the farmhouse and stared at it until the windows started to look like eyes and the door a nose. When
she realized there was no mouth anywhere on the house, she thought, Of course not. It’s silent in the grave, like me.
Helen then went to the garden to examine her Brussels sprouts. She still needed to pick off the cabbage worms.
If she cut all the plants off at the soil right now and burned them in the fireplace, would Wade even notice he’d missed Brussels
sprouts this fall? It wasn’t a terrible idea.
She went around to the side of the house to collect the ax to do just that, but she ended up sitting down on the stump, and that’s where she was when Agnes emerged from the woods. Agnes waved as she crossed the meadow, but Helen didn’t have the energy to lift her hand from the handle of the ax.
When Agnes reached her, she said, “What’s wrong?”
“Just tired.”
Agnes took a seat on a wobbly bench across from Helen. “Yeah? Tired of what?”
“Tired of being tired.”
“Try hiking through the national forest to get here.”
“Not that kind of tired.”
Agnes nodded softly in understanding. “I know what you mean.”
“Our list is in the house,” Helen said. There were new conversation topics since the last time Agnes had visited, but Helen
couldn’t recall exactly what they were anymore. “Remember, there were things you wanted to ask me—about Seattle, I think?”
“Yeah, concerts.” Agnes studied her with a touch of concern. “Hey, want to hear a song?” Agnes pulled earbuds and a music
player from her jacket pocket and held them up.
In the last eighteen months, the only music Helen had heard was her instrumental records. She hesitated, then took the buds
and put them in her ears. Agnes said the name of an artist Helen didn’t recognize, then explained he was a country singer.
A moment later, a fiddle started playing. The lyrics and melody were the opposite of how Helen felt: a guy and girl and a
jukebox and last call at the bar. But the song reminded her how much she liked the crisp sound of a snare drum and the quick
slide of a guitar and the rhyme of happier words, even if they no longer reflected her own life. When the last note faded,
she sighed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. It was a heavy sound.
She took the earbuds out, and Agnes asked, “What’s going on, Helen?”
“Wade’s brother is visiting us.”
“What’s he like?”
“Terrible,” Helen said quietly.
“Oh.”
“Wade thinks his brother is dead,” Helen said. “Do you like Brussels sprouts?”
“Oh, um . . .” Agnes couldn’t hide her surprise at the abrupt change of subject. “Depends how you make ’em.”
“Depends for me too.” Helen’s gaze drifted toward the woods.
“So this thing with Wade’s brother?” Agnes said. “You mean one of his brothers died and another brother came here to tell
you?”
“No, Wade just has the one brother.”
Agnes gave Helen a look of confusion.
Helen sighed. “There was some kind of accident. Wade said Isaac was killed in it. But then he shows up here.”
“So Wade lied about Isaac dying?”
“No, he believes that. He thinks Isaac is, you know . . .”
Agnes’s mouth opened. “A zombie?”
Helen gave her a look: Don’t be ridiculous. “No, not a zombie.” After a moment, Helen said, “A ghost.”
“What?” Agnes started to laugh, but then she saw Helen’s somber expression and stopped. As the silence stretched out, Agnes
shifted uncomfortably on the bench. Finally, she asked, “Where’s your husband now?”
“Working in the trees.”
“Where’s his brother?”
“With him.” Helen shrugged to acknowledge the strangeness of it all.
Agnes leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. This story was getting more and more interesting. “So he’s happy then—that
this brother is back from the dead?”
Helen laughed, but it was a humorless sound. “Oh no, he’s definitely not happy.”
“Is he scared of him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you?”
There was another stretch of silence before Helen answered. “Yes. But not in the same way.”
Agnes inhaled slowly, and Helen could see a million questions forming in the girl’s mind, so Helen said, “Isaac obviously
isn’t dead,” to redirect the conversation. “It’s Wade that I’m worried about.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Agnes said. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s unwell.”
After a pause, Agnes asked, “Are you okay?”
Helen shook her head and looked off into the trees again. “I almost killed a man once, you know.”
Agnes sat up straight. “You did?”
“I wish I’d gone through with it.”
“I wish you had too.”
Helen turned back to Agnes, wide-eyed, and Agnes widened her eyes too.
“Sorry,” Agnes said quickly. “I don’t know why I said that. It was just the way you said it. It made me feel like whoever
it was deserved to die.”
Helen smiled softly, but she could tell Agnes was about to start asking questions she didn’t want to answer. “I’m sorry,”
Helen said as she felt tears gathering and tried to blink them back. “I guess I don’t really want to talk about any of this
anymore.” A single tear escaped, and she wiped at her face. “Maybe we could just sit here together for a little bit?”
“Sure, of course,” Agnes said, and she settled back on the bench.
The two women sat there in the early afternoon breeze for over an hour, talking every now and then, but mostly just breathing
the brisk, earthy aroma of the autumn woodlands. Helen drew comfort from having Agnes near, and it gave her a chance to think
more clearly, and as she did, an idea dawned on her.
When Helen turned to Agnes, a spark of light was coming alive in her again. “Agnes, I need a favor.”
Agnes leaned forward, nodding. Of course, anything.
“Do you think you could get back here sooner rather than later?”
“Yeah, if you need me to. I could probably come in the next few days.”
“Okay then,” Helen said. “There’s something I want you to do for me when you get home.”