The Dead Husband

by Carter Wilson

  Before he gets a chance to answer, the assistant principal speaks. “Hello, Ms. Yates. I’m Ms. Halliday.”

  I’m immediately put off by the whole last-name convention, as if this were a congressional inquest. I straighten, keeping one hand on Max’s back. Ms. Halliday is probably in her midforties but has put effort into looking older. A conservative white blouse, gray slacks, black hair in a tight bun, and glasses that look too large for her narrow face. She reaches out a hand and I shake it. Her fingers are frigid.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet, so let me first say welcome to Middleton. We’re excited to have Max here this year. Please, take a seat.”

  I don’t, and Max remains standing at my side. “Can you just tell me what happened?” It dawns on me Max is the only child here. Where’s the other kid?

  Ms. Halliday scrunches her face in a look of highly practiced mock concern and says, “I’m afraid Max engaged in behavior with another student that would fall within Middleton’s definition of bullying.”

  “Bullying? That’s impossible.” Max is so meek and shy that even talking to other kids has always been a struggle for him.

  “I’m afraid not. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying, in fact, much stricter than what you’d find in the public-school system. And zero tolerance means the student is required to go home for the rest of the day, at a minimum.”

  My voice is louder than I want it to be, but I can’t hold back my frustration. “What happened?”

  Max bursts out. “She started it. She said stuff about Dad.”

  “Please, Max,” Ms. Halliday says. “That’s enough.”

  Anytime another adult talks to my son with a sharp tone, my neck muscles tighten.

  “It’s okay,” I tell him, trying to be as calm as possible.

  “We only discipline behavior we witness or are certain of,” Halliday continues. “His teacher, Ms. Cathman, saw Max threatening another student with a sharpened pencil. She heard him telling the student that he would hurt her.”

  “What?”

  “No!” Max shouts.

  “Now, Max, you know it’s true,” she tells him, and the hairs on my neck stand just hearing her say his name. Then to me: “There was no physical harm done, and I’m not ruling out the possibility Max had been provoked. But we do know what we witnessed, and Max needs to go home for the rest of the day.”

  I turn back to him. “Is this true?” I don’t want to confront him because there is so much pain in his face. I want to hold him, assure him. But I need to know. “Max,” I say, “did you do this?”

  He drops his gaze to the floor. “I wanted her to stop teasing me.” His voice is barely a whisper. “She said…she said the only reason parents kill themselves is to get away from their kids.”

  “Good god,” I say, turning back to Halliday. “And how is that behavior excusable? Do you know what he’s been through? Why is he the one being punished here? What a horrible and cruel thing for any child to say to another.”

  Max tugs on my arm, wanting me to lower to his face. I do and he cups a hand around my ear and whispers so faintly I struggle to process the words.

  “I didn’t hurt her,” he says. “But I wanted to.”

  I pull my face back and look at his, but he shifts his gaze to the floor.

  Halliday didn’t hear him, thank god. “I understand your concern, Ms. Yates. And I do appreciate the…circumstances of your recent move here to Bury. It must be exceptionally difficult. We have spoken with the other student, but we can’t confirm she said those things.”

  I try to shake off what Max has just whispered to me and focus back on Halliday. “What do you mean ‘confirm’? Of course she’s not going to admit to it. Why would she? They’re sixth graders.”

  She takes a step forward and places a hand on my shoulder. It’s forced, like a tip out of a sensitivity-training seminar she was loath to take. “New schools are tough, I get that. I’m sure Max will fit in just fine. We’re happy to have him back tomorrow. Clean slate.”

  This woman, she’s just doing her job. And of course I’d want any kid who threatened my son disciplined as well. But I struggle to keep this rational mindset. What I actually feel is fury. Fury at every little circumstance that led to this moment, at every decision made by myself and others that ended with Max hauled into this room.

  My irrational mindset tell me how delicious it would be to grab Halliday’s hand and pull her wrist back until it broke.

  But I do nothing.

  I say nothing.

  She drops her hand from my shoulder and I take a deep breath, escaping inside myself for the few seconds it takes to regain my mental footing.

  “Fine,” I concede. “We’ll try again tomorrow. Come on, Max.”

  Halliday presses her lips together in a satisfied smile. I don’t say anything else as I lead Max by the hand.

  As we leave, I can’t wash away the seething rage. Max’s comment comes back to my mind, but this time, it’s as relatable as it is concerning.

  I wanted to hurt her.

  Fifteen

  September 29

  I have one hour. One free hour of time to get writing done, and I’ve made the unspeakable mistake of leaving my phone on. A writer’s worst enemy is distraction, and nothing serves that role better than the gleaming screen of my iPhone.

  It buzzes. A text.

  I look down. It’s from Cora. Just three words.

  What the fuck?

  I have no idea what she means or even if I’m the one she intended to text. I reply simply:

  ?

  Seconds later, she texts again.

  The book. Your book. U at home?

  I tell her I am. She says she’s coming over. That we need to talk.

  A slow panic begins to rise in me and I push it down.

  It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

  Laptop screen closed. I can forget about my free hour. I make another coffee and contemplate adding Kahlúa to it. I don’t. Instead, I walk up to my bedroom and to the box I received a few days ago. Fifteen copies of my latest novel, The Child of the Steps. The book doesn’t release until January, and these are just advance-reader copies intended for reviewers and the media, as well as a few copies the publisher always sends for my own use.

  Cora stopped by a few days ago, saw the box, and grabbed a copy for herself. If she’s read any of my other books, it would be news to me. But this book, of all of them, was the one she expressed mild curiosity over. I think it was because they were sitting there in front of her, ripe for the taking.

  Or maybe because the cover shows a staircase.

  Based on her text, I’m guessing she read the book.

  Ten minutes later, I hear the front door open, then slam shut. I can feel my sister’s presence, like a tumor my doctor told me was growing inside my guts.

  “Rose?”

  “Coming,” I say.

  I walk downstairs, taking slower steps than usual.

  She’s in the foyer, perfectly put together for whatever she does during the day. She has the copy of my book in her right hand, clutching it like a fire-and-brimstone preacher would a Bible. Weapon-like.

  I don’t even make it to the bottom step before she unleashes.

  “What the fuck, Rose?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s what you texted me. I think you need to be more specific.”

  “I mean, what…the…fuck…with this book?”

  “It’s a novel, Cora. ‘Novel’ means ‘fiction.’” She’s still staring at me with saucer-sized eyes. “Fiction means it’s not real.”

  “I know what fiction is,” she says. “This isn’t fiction. This is our lives.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I say. “Not even close.”

  “But one element is. The main part of th
e story.” She raps on the cover of the book, as if I don’t see it in her hand. “The main fucking event is very real. It happened here. In this house.” She glances over my shoulder, and I know what she’s looking at. The stairs. The solid wooden stairs, hard and unforgiving.

  I say nothing, and this enrages her.

  She slams the book to the floor, as if she could shatter it. It thunks down unharmed, all the words in the same order as they were before.

  “You can’t publish this,” she says. Her tone shifts from outright anger to fear, betrayed by the crack in her voice. “You have to stop this. Give the publisher something else.”

  I see Cora as I did twenty-two years ago, and it hits me yet again how much of my life has been dictated by what happened in this house back then.

  I fled the state for college, compelled to study journalism and criminal justice. Despite being cut off from my father’s money, I vowed never to return to my hometown and took a job with the Chicago Tribune. I worked as an investigative journalist, which, as I’m sure any psychologist would note, was no coincidence.

  When I started writing books, I felt my novels creeping closer and closer to reality. In fact, I think the whole reason my character Detective Jenna Black exists has been to get to the point where she is now.

  In The Child of the Steps, I face my past head-on, even if it’s disguised as fiction. Yes, it scares the hell out of me to see those words on the printed page. But I also needed to do it. It’s as if writing those scenes made up for the years of the therapy I never had.

  “I can’t stop it, Cora. It’s just a book. It’s coming out, and it’ll sell maybe a few thousand copies. Nobody knows anything; there’s nothing incriminating in there. It’s just a story, that’s all.”

  She’s shifting back to anger. “Has Dad read it?”

  “Dad? Are you kidding?”

  “When he reads this, he’s going to freak the fuck out.”

  “So you’re going to get Dad to read my book?” I say. “Good luck. And even if he does, he won’t care.”

  She’s starting to shake, just a tremor, which moves from her shoulders down to her hands.

  “He will care,” she says. “Then you’ll be back out on the street, no more support. Not even a husband to help pay your bills.”

  Jesus, she’s cold. “Well, in that case, I’ll need to sell a ton of books,” I say.

  Her breathing is shallow but fierce, as if she’s on the verge of a panic attack. She’s still in there somewhere, I think. That Cora I grew up with. My older sister, who used to laugh with me. Play games with me. That Cora still exists, and part of me wants to find her, while another part wants to just mourn her passing and move on.

  “You’re putting this family in harm’s way,” she says. “What you’ve done…it’s completely reckless.”

  Her comment is saturated in irony. “I’m reckless? Are you even listening to yourself? Damn it, Cora.” My voice is just shy of yelling. “Don’t you understand? I needed to write it.”

  “And why now?” she asks. “After all this time, why now?”

  My answer is immediate. “I never used to dream about it. I think about what happened all the time, but never in my sleep. Then the nightmares started a couple years ago, and I can’t stop them. A replay of that night, every single detail, like a movie on a loop in my head. I wake up shaking, then can’t fall back asleep. It’s going to drive me crazy. I can’t go to a shrink. I can’t confide in anyone. I needed some kind of…release. So I wrote about it.”

  Cora considers all of what I’ve told her, puts a hand on her hip, and says, “Boo-fucking-hoo.”

  “God, you’re a bitch.”

  “So did your scary little dream go away? After putting the family in danger, are you at least getting your beauty sleep?”

  “No,” I say. “It didn’t stop. So I came home. I realized I need to deal with our past. I don’t know how, but I have to reconcile what happened. The more I try to hide it away, the more it grows in me.”

  “God, you’re so dramatic.”

  “How are you so emotionless about all this?”

  “For all you know, it haunts me, too,” Cora says. “But I’m smart enough not to publish an account of it in a book.”

  “Yes, I wrote about it. But I’m not crazy. I was careful. Read it again. There’s nothing in there that anyone else knows about.” I try to calm myself the best I can, steady my breathing. “I mean, you’re telling me that after all this time, you haven’t talked about it at all to anyone? Not even Peter?”

  I can see in her eyes that the Cora I hoped to find is nowhere to be found. Probably doesn’t even exist. “No, Rose. I haven’t told anyone. You know why? Because that was our fucking agreement. You, me, Dad. We all agreed to it, right here.” She looks around. “Exactly where we’re standing. That night, we swore to each other we’d never say a word.”

  “That was a long time ago,” I say. I’m sure I knew all along, even subconsciously, that writing about it was a risk, and now I try to convince myself everything will be fine. It’s easy for Cora to spot the similarities between the chapter in my novel and the real-life event on which it was based. She was there after all. But how would anyone outside her and my father be able to piece anything together? There’s no way.

  Still…

  Maybe the past should have remained there.

  Cora looks to be deciding whether to keep arguing or take a swing at me. “You will not ruin my life.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you did what you did,” I reply.

  “You’re a mess, Rose. And I don’t want to be a part of it.”

  “You need to—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” she says. “Don’t ever tell me to calm down, I swear to god.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” I say. But Cora doesn’t even allow me the chance to finish my first thought, which was to tell her to trust everything will be okay. She apparently has decided she’s done with this conversation, because she kicks at the book, sending it sliding along the hardwood floor.

  Then, without another word, she turns and leaves, slamming the mighty Logan Yates front door behind her. In her absence, the foyer takes on a degree of warmth.

  My heart is racing; anger and fear course through my veins. My body yearns to run, and as I start calculating if I have enough time for a few miles before I pick up Max from school, it hits me.

  Running.

  I’m always running.

  Each time I have the dream, I run. After arguments with Riley, I’d run. After taking the wrath of Cora, I want to run.

  Running away. That’s what I’ve always done, isn’t it? And that’s what I promised myself to stop. After Riley died and my father asked me to come back to Bury, I told myself it was time to face my past. Go back to the house. Be with it.

  And still I haven’t.

  Here I was, thinking that moving back would stop the nightmares. But just being in this house isn’t enough.

  I have to be in this house.

  So I turn, absorb the silence of the foyer, and head to the stairs.

  Sixteen

  I don’t know how to do this or what it is I’m even doing. But I have an idea.

  I step out of my shoes, peel off my socks, and feel the cool kiss of the wooden floors on my soles. It’s only a few steps to reach the base of the stairs, but I take my time. I’m not scared as much as I am thoughtful. I’m not going to race through this.

  When I reach the base of the stairs, I step onto a spot about three feet from the bottom of the first riser. This is the first time I’ve stood here in over two decades. Ever since that night, I’ve always approached the stairs at an angle, just to avoid standing exactly where I am.

  It doesn’t feel any different.

  I sit, cross my legs, place my hands on top of my knees.
<
br />   Close my eyes.

  No, keep them open. No more looking away.

  The color of the hardwood stairs is a golden red, the last seconds of a sunset. Glossy finish, always gleaming. I can even see where two of the steps were restained, the color very close but not exactly the same as the adjacent ones.

  As I stare, the silence shifts into a hum, a rhythm of energy both soothing and overwhelming. It’s as if I’m floating through space, enveloped in the vibration of all the universe.

  I surrender to this hum, letting it take over my body, letting it pulse from the crown of my head to the chilled tips of my toes. Eyes open, ears attuned, and the surface of my skin poised to feel even the breath of a spider, I have become a receptor for whatever signal wants to transmit through me.

  This is when I realize the hum is not a singular, steady sound. It’s the collective sound of all the voices of my past. All the words of everyone in my life up to now, stitched together in a mosaic of noise. And these words, some of them are loving and soft, but many are angry. Desperate. Every decision I’ve made as an adult has been born of some kind of desperation, and I hear that now. My decision to leave Bury. My path to writing crime fiction. My relationship with Riley. I was chasing off a desperation each and every time. That desperation would scurry away just out of reach but, like a pack of wolves, always returned, and each time got a little closer.

  I don’t blink, and the steps start to melt in front of me. Dripping, oozing. They run together until they’re no longer recognizable.

  Deep in the recess of my mind, there’s a realization that none of this is real, but I let that knowledge stay tucked away. In this moment, I’m where I need to be.

  I’m transcending something.

  I remain motionless, watching the melting continue.

  I don’t know how long I sit here, but it seems forever. With each passing minute, the hum deepens. Grows louder. Tells me it needs to be fed.

  Finally, I talk. Offering the stairs what I think they need. Just two words.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and my voice is like cannon fire. The hum protests, as if unwilling to accept my apology.