Chapter Forty-Three
“Wade, is Isaac here for his half of the money?”
Helen stood in front of the closed bathroom door, and Wade sat in a bathtub full of water, cornered, wet, and naked. Not so
easy for him to walk away in a huff and avoid the conversation. He stopped scrubbing his shoulders and looked at her coolly.
“His half of the money?” he repeated.
“From the sale of the farm.”
“What’s a ghost going to do with money?”
“Oh, God, Wade. Will you stop it?” she snapped.
“Not that this matters, because Isaac was dead when I sold it,” Wade said, “but I owned the farm one hundred percent when
he was alive too. My dad was old school and put it all in the oldest son’s name.”
Helen’s eyes narrowed. If the title had really been in Wade’s name, that meant he wouldn’t have had a motive to try to eliminate
Isaac to inherit it all.
Wade took in her expression and said, “You don’t believe me?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what to think at this point.”
She gave him a tired stare and went into their bedroom.
Only a minute later, Wade entered, towel around his waist and rivulets of water running down his legs, wet footprints left
behind on the hardwood floor as he stalked to the closet. He started digging through it, grumbling under his breath. Helen
watched him curiously.
Finally, he found a briefcase and tossed it on the bed. It was old brown leather, fraying at the edges. She knew it held papers
and things of his, but she’d never examined its contents. He snapped it open and shuffled through it, water dripping from
his hair onto the papers.
“Here, here. Look!” he said, and he handed her a paper.
She scanned the document. “Okay, fine. So I can see you owned the farm alone.” It was the deed to the property from when his
father had died fourteen years prior, and it was in his name only.
Wade snatched the paper back from her. “And good for that, because it shows I didn’t stand to gain anything financially from
Isaac dying. Otherwise, maybe the cops would have tried to pin an accident on me.”
He tossed the deed back inside the briefcase.
Helen watched him warily. Regardless of which brother held the deed to the property, it seemed only fair to her that they
should split any inheritance.
She worded her next question carefully. “Had Isaac not . . . died, would you have given him half of the money from the farm?”
Wade snapped the briefcase shut. “Honestly, I don’t know, Helen. In case you can’t tell, I don’t like my brother all that
much. And not just because he’s haunting me.”
Ten o’clock.
Eleven o’clock.
Midnight.
As Helen lay in bed next to Wade’s sleeping form, she knew that Isaac was waiting for her in his room.
She could feel it in her body, floating and falling on these new and mysterious tides.
She could feel it in the pull of the moon from the night sky.
She could feel it because she knew Isaac was feeling it too.
The circle had completely closed around her.
Isaac, Isaac, Isaac.
One o’clock.
She wouldn’t go to him though.
She couldn’t do it again. One time was a mistake. Two times made her a calculated adulteress.
Two o’clock.
Helen ran her hands over the front of her wrinkled silk nightgown, the memory of what had caused those wrinkles still vivid
from the night before. She wished she were wearing one of her regular nightgowns, but strangely, she hadn’t been able to find
either of her two long-sleeved ones in the laundry hamper when she had gotten ready for bed. She hadn’t asked Wade if he’d
seen them, because she didn’t want to draw attention to how wrinkled the silk one was. Helen had been so distracted lately,
perhaps she had washed them without remembering and accidentally put them away with the kitchen linens or bedding. She would
have to search for them tomorrow when the men were gone. When she had pulled on the silk nightgown again, she’d felt as though
she were displaying her scarlet letter.
Beneath the silk nightgown, she wore a pair of black silk panties. There had been a clean pair of beige cotton underwear in
her dresser right next to them, but she had reached for the black silk.
Three o’clock.
Helen finally drifted to sleep and awoke with a start shortly thereafter. It must have been the faint noise of the door opening,
the hall light shining into the room. She sat up in bed and saw him.
Isaac stood at the threshold of the bedroom door, backlit, so all she could see was his silhouette. She shook her head, but
he didn’t move from the spot.
“Go,” she whispered.
To her surprise, he did. A moment later, the hallway went dark.
Helen felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.
She waited a minute before she got out of bed to close the door. As she reached for it and began to push it shut, Isaac’s
hand closed around her wrist.
Part of her knew he would be waiting just outside the door. Part of her knew if she went to close the door, this would happen.
She let him pull her into the hallway. Each of his hands encircled each of her wrists, so lightly that she wished it were
more pressure.
“I thought you’d come see me,” Isaac said.
“I can’t do this.”
“And yet you are.”
“No, we did. Past tense,” she said. “But now we can’t. Present tense.”
“It’s kind of hot when you lecture me on my grammar.”
It was one of the few times she’d heard Isaac make a joke, and it caught her off guard so much that it made her laugh. She
quickly stemmed the sound of her laughter, worried Wade would hear.
Isaac pressed his lips to her ear. “That’s so pretty,” he whispered. “I want to hear you laugh again.”
She shook her head, as if to say no, but really she just wanted to feel her ear brush against his lips again.
“Come into my bedroom and I promise I’ll make you laugh,” he said.
It was the promise of laughter that did her in. Here was a glimmer of light that might pull her back from the darkness. As
she looked into Isaac’s eyes, she decided she was either going to move toward this consolation with him right now, or next
time she wouldn’t shoot the gun at the sky. Next time she’d keep it aimed at her own head.
“Okay,” she whispered.
As it were, Isaac did not actually make Helen laugh in bed. It takes a certain kind of playfulness for laughter during sex,
and Isaac wasn’t playful in that way.
He played in a different way. Just as they would settle into a rhythm of one kind and she began to feel sheltered inside one particular sensation, one particular emotion, he would change everything. She’d find herself in another position, experiencing a rush of something else.
This went on for some length of time until Helen finally realized tears were running down her face. Isaac was spooning her
from behind, moving into her, gently, languidly.
Then, without warning, he moved and pulled her on top of him. He gripped her hips so solidly that she couldn’t move as he
drove up into her, and it was suddenly too much, all these abrupt changes. They made her feel as if every emotion she’d ever
had was going to start spilling out of her.
Helen put the flat of her hand against Isaac’s cheek. When he opened his eyes and looked at her, she lifted her hand away
from his face, only a few inches, and brought it back to his cheek. A firm tap more than a slap.
“You can hit me,” he said, still moving up into her.
She shook her head. No.
“Hit me,” he repeated.
His voice sounded like a taunt. He moved into her deeper, hard enough that it was starting to hurt.
She tried to lift her body slightly, to give herself a respite, but Isaac didn’t loosen his grip. Instead, he said, “I want
you to hit me,” and as he thrust his hips up, he pulled hers down very hard.
She gasped at the pain and saw him smile in return.
So she slapped him hard across the face, and moments later, she watched him come.
They rolled apart, and Helen listened as Isaac caught his breath. She waited for him to say something to check on her. She
planned to do the same, maybe apologize for hitting him so hard, though from his reaction it seemed obvious he’d liked it.
But instead, he drifted to sleep.
The blood rushed to her face. She didn’t mind that he had come first, and she was okay with hitting him—maybe even kind of
liked it—so long as he liked it. But she knew he had seen her crying, and he hadn’t asked her if she was okay, hadn’t asked if he’d pushed her too
far, hadn’t asked if she wanted him to pleasure her another way after he’d finished. No, he’d just fallen asleep, sprawled
out on his back.
Her head felt heavy and sick. She could blame it on the wolves, blame it on the dark, or blame it on her entire life falling
apart two years ago, but it wouldn’t change all these wrong turns. She threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side
of the bed. Fine then, this is what she deserved.
Immediately, Isaac’s hand found hers and clasped it, preventing her from standing.
“Don’t go,” he said. “I haven’t taken care of you.”
“It’s okay,” Helen said, but her tone was sharp.
His hand moved to her stomach and slowly began to reach lower. She pushed it away, and he pulled his hand back.
Silence.
Finally, he asked, “What do you want, Helen?”
Oblivion. Peace. Quiet. Noise. Revenge. Joy. Excitement. Death. “Will you just hold me?”
Helen felt the weight shift on the bed and then Isaac was behind her, pulling her against his body. She closed her eyes and
let him wrap her up in his arms, feeling weightless as he gently settled their bodies back onto the bed.
“I only came here to see my brother. I had no idea it would turn out like this,” Isaac whispered into her ear. “It’s been
more fun than I expected.”
Helen had no response. Fun is not the word she would have chosen.
She stayed there in Isaac’s arms as long as she could afford to, and then she slipped away, back to her bedroom before the
sun rose.