The Dead Husband

by Carter Wilson

  I know all these streets, all these houses. Little has changed since my teen years. Bury hasn’t expanded or contracted; it remains trapped in a pocket of time and money, insulated from the outside world. No wonder my father loves it here. The town of Bury is nothing more than a strong front door. Steadfast and unyielding to time.

  There is scarcely any lower or middle class here, and I’m reminded of that with every house I pass. Every perfect lawn, every iron gate. All the brick is red, all the creeping vines green. Most of the residents white.

  I make a right into Arlington Estates, a small neighborhood of colonials built sometime in the forties and fifties. I remember a few high school parties in this area held at Bob Sakin’s house. He was a classic screwup of a kid, an only child of very rich and devoutly inattentive parents. They let him do whatever he wanted, and since he wasn’t smart enough to do anything worthwhile, he spent his days in a haze of pot smoke and held huge parties on the weekends when his parents dashed off to their other house in the Hamptons.

  Sometimes I wonder what happened to all these people from my past. But those times are few. I’m content keeping my past buried, which underscores the conflict with being back here. I’m sure many of the people from my past still live here, and I won’t be able to avoid seeing them for long.

  I round another street, intent on looping my way around this neighborhood on my way back home. Two houses up on the right, a man in a tank top is trimming back branches on a tree that towers over the sidewalk. His presence doesn’t intrigue me so much because he’s black, though I’d be lying if I said that didn’t surprise me a little. I’m more intrigued because this man is intensely good looking, and as I approach, I realize the better term is beautiful.

  I’m running on the sidewalk where he’s working, compelling me to cross over to the street. As I close in, I cut through a strip of soaking-wet grass, and my right foot slips out from under me. It doesn’t take more than a split second to realize I’m going to fall, with no ability to do anything about it other than accept my fate.

  The man and I make brief eye contact as my banana-peel crash happens less than ten feet from where he’s standing. I land hard on my butt, my earbuds popping out as I do, and the only thing saving me from a broken tailbone is the spongy grass. I twist on the ground in a little pain and a lot of embarrassment.

  The man drops his shears and races toward me.

  “Are you okay?”

  My running shorts have soaked in water and my butt is now unpleasantly moist.

  “I think so,” I say. I struggle to rise and he reaches his hand out to help.

  I buck against my Yates instincts to reject help for fear it projects weakness and take his hand. He lifts me with no effort, as if just pulling a weed from his lawn.

  “I think the only thing bruised is my ego,” I say.

  He smiles and I’m blinded by a perfect set of teeth.

  “I’ve done worse,” he said. “I was on a first date and tried going through a revolving door that was locked in place. Walked right into the glass. Even got a bloody nose. There was no second date.”

  “That’s definitely worse,” I say. A part of me wants to know how long ago that date was. Another part of me is immensely distracted by the back of my soaking-wet shorts.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you…” I let the last word dangle.

  “Alec. Alec Wallin. This is my place here.”

  “Yup, I assumed that. You working in the yard and all.”

  “I could’ve been the hired help.”

  I’m not quite sure what to say to this. My father would instantly quip Yard work is for Mexicans, not Blacks.

  I clear my throat. “I’m Rose. Yates.”

  His eyes widen just a hair. “Ah, Rose Yates.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Only that I’ve heard of you. That you’re back in town after having grown up here. And…oh, hell, I’m sorry. I heard about your husband. That’s just awful.”

  “Thank you.” I wonder how long the I’m sorrys will last. “I didn’t realize I was part of the gossip mill already.”

  “Well, if you grew up here, you know how this place is. I’ve been here ten years. My name’s been dragged around town its own fair share.” His gaze does a quick sweep of the sky, as if he’s scanning a force field trapping him here. “Actually, I think you know my ex-wife. You went to school with her. Tasha Collins.”

  Bam.

  This is how Harry Potter felt hearing the name Voldemort spoken aloud.

  Tasha Collins.

  “Tasha?” I say. I can’t even pretend to hide my distaste. “I don’t even know—”

  He holds a hand up. “I know. You don’t have to say anything. Just don’t hold it against me. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  Tasha Collins was the clichéd popular girl in high school, though everyone I knew hated her. Her popularity stemmed from her physical gorgeousness. She was hated because every other part of her was ugly. A massive flaunter of money in a place where everyone was swimming in it already. Dumb as dirt. And bitterly mean to anyone she spoke to, including her friends. Last I heard of her, she was going off to Tufts for college, though I can’t imagine how she ever would have graduated.

  “Tasha still lives here?”

  “Oh yeah,” Alec says. “Only reason I’m still here. I won’t give up seeing my boy.”

  So Tasha Collins married an African American man. I have to admit, that’s more progressive than I would have credited her with being.

  “When I was twelve, she once called me Pancake Tits,” I tell him. I can’t believe I just said this, but the memory came back with such jarring force I couldn’t help myself.

  Alec looks properly taken aback for about two seconds before laughter takes over. From-the-gut laughter, and I can’t help but join in.

  “Yeah, that sounds like her,” he says.

  “Maybe she got better after high school?”

  Alec wipes a film of sweat off his forehead and shakes his head. “Nope.”

  “But you still married her?”

  He grimaces. Only word for it.

  “Let’s just say I didn’t know Tasha well when she got pregnant. Not sure we would’ve ever stayed together if not for Micah—that’s my boy. We made it last as long as we could. And I can’t say I was the perfect husband either. Micah’s better with his mom and me under different roofs, that’s for sure.” He shifts his footing and gives me a gaze I could get lost in.

  “I can understand that.”

  Alec lets out another laugh, this one softer. “I’m normally not so open. Certainly not with someone I just met.”

  “How does it feel?” I ask.

  He thinks about it for a moment, then smiles. “Good.”

  The ensuing silence lasts long enough to make me nervous. I brush a few stray strands of grass off the backs of my thighs and say, “I better finish my run.”

  “Okay, Rose. Nice to meet you. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

  “Okay, then,” I say, hearing a tiny bit of Wisconsin accent come out. I turn and carefully make my way across the grass and onto the street, where I start jogging again.

  The only thing distracting me from the uncomfortable wet stain on my butt is wondering if Alec notices.

  Ten

  What kind of woman is attracted to another man less than two months after her husband’s death?

  Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, a way of dealing with grief. Or perhaps it was such a transient, innocent attraction that it doesn’t even warrant analysis. After all, I’m just human, and a still-youngish, heterosexual female version at that. I’d challenge any others in my category to stand face-to-face with Alec Wallin without the smallest of stirrings.

  But I know the true answer is altogether more fierce.r />
  I didn’t love my husband.

  In the beginning, there was the facsimile of love best described as passionate infatuation. I wanted to be around Riley every hour. Share experiences together. Spend days naked in bed. Travel wherever our whims took us. I suspect the line between love and a desperate fear of loneliness is drawn in wet ink and easily smudged.

  When I left Bury for college, damage seeped into every decision I made. At Northwestern, I studied both journalism and criminal justice, perhaps knowing on some level that writing about crime would someday be necessary for my conscience.

  I dated boys who were the opposite of my father. I preferred the wild, the carefree, the spontaneous. I wanted smiles, not squints.

  Riley was so different from my father that it was easy to think I was in love.

  In those days, Riley had an adventurous spirit, a sharp intellectual curiosity, and an insatiable need to achieve. We met fourteen years ago. I was just twenty-three, two years younger than him. I was a few years out of school and was doing investigative journalism for the Chicago Tribune, mostly covering local crime. Riley was a friend of a friend, and I was immediately drawn to him the moment a group of us went out for drinks. His scraggly beard and mussed hair suggested a casual playfulness, yet there was also an intensity about him that drew me in. It was more than confidence. He had the air of a man who knew greatness would come to him after a mandatory waiting period. There was no arrogance, just a certainty.

  My courtship with Riley was a frenzied whirl of sex and adventure, ingredients more addictive than heroin, at least until the high wears off.

  Weekends away at whatever place we could afford, just for a different setting. Cheap hotels in the winter. Camping in the summer. Twice we even spent the night in our car, just because.

  We moved in together after six months. He proposed after seven. I’d never met his family. He’d never met mine. I was swept away by a current I thought was called fate, but it turned out to be a riptide.

  I should have known.

  You know who did?

  My father.

  One month into our engagement, my father flew out to visit me in Chicago. He stayed at the Four Seasons, preferring that to the spare room in our apartment. Couldn’t blame him.

  One dinner. That’s all it took.

  One dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant on the Mile. I can even isolate the chunk of conversation where my father determined Riley wasn’t worthy of me. It went something like:

  Dad: So, Rose tells me you’re an entrepreneur?

  Riley: Yes, that’s right.

  Dad: And what the fuck does that mean?

  Riley (smiles): I’m cofounding a company that will bring clean-energy products to impoverished areas of Africa and Asia.

  Dad: Clean-energy products in Africa? Jesus, son, those poor countries don’t even have power. They’ve got nothing, which means no pollution. You want the freshest breath of air you’ve ever tasted? Go stand in the middle of Burkina Faso and inhale. Probably give you an orgasm. They don’t need clean energy, Riley. They need energy.

  Me: Dad.

  Riley: That’s actually not true, and it’s more complica—

  Dad: What’s your funding? How many months of burn do you have left? What’s your future income stream based on? Most importantly, what’s your exit strategy?

  Riley tried. He answered all those questions, and looking back now, I can see how they didn’t explain what, in fact, his full plan was. But Riley cared about making the world better for people other than himself, something my father couldn’t comprehend. So I was more than pissed off when my father took me aside the next day and said, “Look, sweetheart, there’s no easy way to say this, but your guy is a fuck-all. I’ve seen the type before. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is, which is compounded by the fact that I think he’s probably lazy. I’m guessing you’ve told him how much money I have?”

  Then came the argument, the one that began the moment I left home for school. Logan Yates’s money traveled only within a certain radius and for a designated time period. He was quite willing to pay for tuition and a comfortable lifestyle when my sister and I went away for college, but we were expected to return to Bury after school. Work for him, or at least be close to him. My father’s idea of family was based on proximity, never love.

  Cora returned to Bury. I didn’t, knowing that I’d rather be destitute than return to that place.

  My funding was cut. Black vs. white. Right vs. wrong. Yates vs. the world. My father exists in absolutes.

  “Dad,” I replied to him, “it doesn’t matter how much money you have. I don’t see any of it. And that’s not important anyway.”

  “No?” I remember the smug, knowing look on his face. “You’re still in my will, and you know you’ll always have a place back in Bury if you want to be…more comfortable. I’m guessing your man knows that. Maybe he’s just biding time, hoping I’ll kick it in the near future.”

  “You’re so frustra—”

  “Prenup. Just have him sign a prenup. If you get any money from me, he’s not entitled to it in the event…you know…he does what a typical fuck-all does. Which is fuck it all up.”

  I stormed away.

  My father went back to Bury.

  Riley and I married, and we never had a prenup. My father and my sister came to the wedding, which was a very inexpensive affair at a DoubleTree hotel in the Chicago suburbs. My sister drank and looked bored the whole time, and my father wore a just-you-wait look on his face for most of the night. During the father-daughter dance, he predicted I’d come home to Bury, eventually. He was as sure of this as Riley was about his eventual greatness. I told him he couldn’t be more wrong.

  That was thirteen years ago.

  Turns out he was right.

  Eleven

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  September 8

  Two days ago, Detective Colin Pearson had walked out of his sergeant’s office, trying to suppress a smile. Smiling might jinx things.

  He’d laid out his case against Rose Yates to Sergeant Al Brennan, Colin’s direct supervisor in the Special Investigations Unit. Brennan was a fiftyish fireplug of a man who wore a scowl as his default expression. Colin hadn’t been too hopeful; asking for travel funds from a tight budget to cross state lines and interview a person of interest was never an easy sell.

  Colin had learned over the years to keep requests like this straightforward and to the point. No flowery language.

  He’d outlined to the sergeant how thirty-nine-year-old Riley McKay died due to an overdose of diazepam, zolpidem, and alcohol. McKay commonly took both meds to help him sleep, but they were not prescribed to be taken in combination, certainly not with alcohol, and definitely not at the high levels of his final ingestion.

  There were no usual hallmarks of a suicide, Colin had explained. No note, although the majority of suicide victims didn’t leave notes anyway. No phone call to anyone, no red-flag social-media posts. McKay’s only external communication that night was with a buddy, confirming their weekly Frisbee golf game.

  Detective Cooper had taken the case shortly before his retirement and had only interviewed Rose Yates once for about fifteen minutes. Colin had told the sergeant that, in his opinion, Detective Cooper might have rushed through some of the standard procedure on his way out the door. He hadn’t asked Ms. Yates about her relationship with her husband or even if she thought her husband committed suicide. There were a lot of holes left to plug, including the question of why Ms. Yates had taken her son and quickly moved to New Hampshire after her husband’s death. Colin had conceded the move was not necessarily unusual for a grieving widow, but it was worth a few follow-up questions.

  Capping it all off, Colin had told his sergeant about Ms. Yates’s alter ego, J. L. Sharp, a mystery writer. Not that being a mystery writer carried with it inherent susp
icion or even the writer’s intricate knowledge of police procedure, case management, and suspect-interrogation techniques. What was suspicious was the scene in Yates’s most recent book in which a woman killed her forty-year-old husband by grinding up eight tablets of his prescription sleep medication and stirring the powder into his whiskey nightcap.

  “That’s a reach,” the sergeant had said. “I’m not saying it’s not interesting, but you don’t really think she’d commit murder in the same manner as a character in her book, do you? That’s pretty blatant.”

  “Maybe the wife had written the scene based on watching her husband regularly mix meds and alcohol,” Colin countered. “And on that night, she acted impulsively. Maybe didn’t think about the connection to her book.”

  “Sounds like she’s smarter than that. Statistically speaking, it’s probably equally likely the husband offed himself in that manner to frame her.”

  Colin nodded. “Could be. But we don’t have him around to ask. Just the wife.”

  “And her motive? Money?”

  “Don’t think so,” Colin had said. “They didn’t have much. Had a small life-insurance policy on him, but they’d stopped paying the premium a year ago.”

  “Who paid the bills? Did the wife know the policy lapsed?”

  “That’s one of the questions I want to ask her.”

  “Other assets?”

  Colin shrugged. “They have, or Ms. Yates now has, about twenty grand in credit-card debt and less than three thousand in a checking account. Couple older-model cars. A small IRA, about seven thousand.”

  “So he wasn’t worth more dead than alive.”

  “No. And the wife comes from money. Her father runs an investment firm in Boston. Maybe they’re estranged, because Ms. Yates appears to be just getting by.”

  Sergeant Brennan had taken everything in and leaned back in his chair. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Colin had conceded. “But I don’t think we’re close enough to determining that right now.”