“Shut up!” Cora yells at me. “The neighbors will hear you.”
But I can’t stop. I yank away from Caleb’s grip and back against the hallway wall. It doesn’t occur to me to try to help him. All I can do is scream.
With just a few swift strides, Cora is on me. Right forearm across my chest, pinning me to the wall. Left hand over my mouth. I shriek a second longer, the sound muffled against her palm. Her skin is wet and salty, and in this moment, I realize I’m tasting blood. Caleb’s blood. I look down at her forearm pressed against my chest. My gaze scans the length of it until I see the Swiss Army knife clutched in her fist, daggerlike, the longest of its blades unhoused and angled just slightly away from my breast. I recognize the knife because I have a matching one. They were in our Christmas stockings five or six years ago, because Santa knows every little girl wants a multi-tool pocketknife.
The blade is dark with blood.
“Shut the fuck up,” she says. “We need to think. Gotta figure this out, Rose. You and me. He attacked me. He attacked me and I was defending myself.”
“No,” Caleb manages. “She…she’s lying. Please…”
Cora lets go of me, turns, and delivers a harsh kick to Caleb’s head, which snaps upward for a split second before his jaw crashes back to the floor.
He moans as Cora returns her attention to me.
“You’re a part of this now.”
“What’s happening?” I manage to say. My throat is on fire, as if I’ve just swallowed a cup of hot sand. “We have to call for help.”
“We will.” Her voice is steady. How is she so calm? “You just need to understand. Caleb attacked me. In my room. Tried to rape me.”
“No!” he screams, which turns into a sob. “It’s not true. I didn’t…do anything.” He gets up to one knee before falling back to the floor, slipping on his own blood.
“Shut up!” Cora howls, the calm vanished. Turning to me, she says, “I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice. You need to believe me, Rose. I thought he was going to kill me.”
A movement to my right. Caleb is finally standing at the edge of the stairs, facing us. His upper body hunched, breaths shallow and erratic.
“Please…” His labored huffs are painful to hear. “She st-stabbed me.” He looks down at his crimson T-shirt and pats his chest, then sobs again. “Oh god. Oh my god. I need help.” He inserts a finger through his shirt and touches what I’m guessing is open flesh, his eyes in disbelief.
Cora takes a step and faces him. Her body is rigid, taut. He is unstable, weakened, his legs shaking in an effort to remain upright. Caleb is a strong kid and has three or four inches on my sister, but right now, she is the only threat in the house.
“Please…” He reaches a hand out and places it on her right shoulder. Not in aggression but for support. “I don’t…I don’t understand why—”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Cora arcs her right hand—the clutched fist holding the open blade—high above her head, then brings the knife directly into the flesh above Caleb’s clavicle, the soft area between his neck and shoulder. It makes a sound I’ve never heard before and know will never leave me for the rest of my life.
She releases her hand, leaving the knife inside him.
Caleb’s eyes bulge, a mix of surprise and horror.
“How does that feel?” she asks him. Her voice isn’t even angry. If anything, it’s flirty.
Caleb stumbles, loses his balance, then falls backward down the flight of hardwood stairs. It sounds like a bowling ball being rolled down the steps, and as he reaches the landing, there’s a nauseating crunch that can only be some part of him breaking in two.
Silence. Desperate, painful silence, interrupted only by my own breaths. I’m still pressing my back against the wall, wishing I could disappear within it, transport to anywhere but here. Cora stands at the top of the stairs, her back to me, arms lifted by her side, a scarecrow.
Maybe two minutes have passed since Caleb first emerged from the bedroom.
Cora descends, slowly, one stair at a time, until her figure disappears from my view.
That’s when I hear the distant sound of the motorized garage door opening and then, a few seconds later, closing.
Dad’s home.
Forty-Five
November 13
Present Day
I wake screaming. This isn’t unusual after I have the dream, but Max is in my bed and my shriek startles him to tears. It’s his habit to come into my bed after I’ve fallen asleep about once a week, and I hadn’t even known he was in here tonight.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “I was just having a dream.” I reach out to rub his back but he pulls away from me, angry. “You know that I have bad dreams from time to time.”
“You scared me,” he says, his voice muffled into his pillow.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
He says nothing. I reach out and touch his shoulder, and he pulls away.
I’m so tired of trying.
I’m so tired of everything.
I fall back into my pillow knowing sleep won’t come easily, if at all. The sweat cools on my neck, and I see Cora in my mind as I saw her hours ago at the trailhead, arms spread, knife grasped in her right hand, facing the woods as if praying to some god who listens only to her.
My mind races. I focus on my breathing and repeat a mantra, hoping it will help.
I am.
I am.
I am.
My heartbeat slows and, after time, sleep tugs at me, but there’s the problem with all this. I’m too exhausted to do anything but stay in bed, yet I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to return to the place I just was, the world of my past. I’d rather go through my day torpid and dizzy with fatigue than keep reliving that horror.
I am.
I am.
I am.
A voice tears into my head. She sounds an awful lot like me, but there’s no bullshit about her. She’s the part of me that forces my eyes open when all I want to do is look away.
You are WHAT, exactly?
I don’t know, I tell her, this reasoning Rose. I just am.
Wrong. Everyone can be defined as something. Let’s start basic, Rose. Are you a good person or bad person?
I’m a good person.
This Rose isn’t buying it. She says, I’ll let you believe that. But would you agree that good people are capable of doing things society considers bad?
Yes, of course.
So here’s a more specific question, and I don’t want you to think about good or bad, right or wrong. Just facts. The question is this: Are you a killer?
I don’t answer but rather repeat my mantra, telling this Rose my words have nothing to do with her question.
I am.
I am.
I am.
Okay, fine, ignore me. Let’s talk about someone else. Let’s talk about Cora.
This is easier. Okay.
Is Cora a killer? she asks me.
Yes.
But is she a good person?
I don’t hesitate. No.
How about this one…a question you’ve thought about before, more so tonight than ever before. Has Cora killed again?
Yes, I reply. The dog.
No, not the dog. People. People like Caleb. Innocent people.
Caleb wasn’t innocent, I tell her, hearing the weakness of my argument in my own thoughts.
You don’t really know that. Based on everything you remember from that night, do you truly believe he was trying to hurt Cora?
It’s what I’ve always let myself believe, because it’s the only way to rationalize what happened. He must have been trying to hurt her. Maybe she overreacted, maybe she—
Cut the shit, Rose. You’re still rationalizing. Answer without thinking. A
nswer from your soul. Answer from the place you’ve been unwilling to explore for twenty-two years. Do you think Caleb was trying to hurt Cora?
No.
Do you think she enjoyed killing him?
Yes.
Do you know why she did it?
Because she’s broken. She’s different and she’s broken.
Good, Rose, we’re making progress here. You won’t sleep and you’ll feel like hell tomorrow, but we’re making progress. So given all you know about her, all your interactions from the past and present, do you think Cora has killed again?
I have no idea.
What if she has, Rose? What are you going to do about it?
I can’t change the past.
She’s still young. She’s got a lot of years ahead of her. Just think what she’s capable of. Not to mention the influence she’s passing down to that little Lizzie Borden of hers.
I never really thought it was—
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, ROSE?
I give my own mind one final answer. One answer, as I lie here in the dark, listening to the soft snores of Max, to whom sleep comes with ease and he doesn’t even realize what a gift that is.
In the dead of this night, I answer.
I have to stop her.
Forty-Six
Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin
November 15
Colin never appreciated the dark as much as he did now. In his living room, ten o’clock at night, all things silent, all lights off. He’d spied stray ambient light from the digital thermostat and put duct tape over it.
Curtains drawn, taped flush to the wall.
Darkness, like a womb.
A delicate, fertile womb. It was Colin’s world now. Maybe just for tonight. Maybe for the rest of his life. But in this womb, Colin felt some kind of relief. Certainly not happiness. But relief. Like pain being transferred from one body part to another.
Also, he was drunk.
He stumbled in the darkness to the refrigerator and opened it. Brilliant light flooded him, causing him to recoil. He reached inside and grabbed an eighth beer. Twisted the cap off, then closed the door, entombing himself in the blackness once again.
Comfort in the void, he thought. Colin tipped the bottle back and spilled as much as he drank, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in the void—that was how voids worked.
He stumbled back to the couch and collapsed onto it. Maybe he’d sleep tonight, but probably not. Not for more than a few minutes at a burst, just like the last few nights. How the fuck does a person ever get a real sleep after their wife and baby die? Seems sacrilegious. If Colin ever got a peaceful eight-hour sleep again, he’d slit his wrists out of sheer guilt.
Sleep made him think of Riley McKay, who slept so hard he never came out of it. And Riley McKay made him think of Rose Yates. Colin had become obsessed with her, something more easily admitted in the pitch-black of his house. Obsessed with needing to know what she was guilty of, if anything. Since Meg’s death, Rose Yates had occupied a disproportionate chunk of Colin’s thoughts. He hadn’t wanted this, but he had no power to fight the way his synapses fired.
And that led to tonight, where Colin, deep in the dark, seven and a half beers in his bloodstream, wearing nothing but underwear and a thousand-pound suit of grief, powered on his phone, bringing a digital spotlight into the void. He searched his contacts for Rose Yates, whom he’d added in his list before his trip to Bury.
Colin thumbed the Call button.
Fuck it, he thought, bringing the phone to his ear. Fuck everything.
Four rings, then voicemail. It was an hour later in Bury.
He dialed again.
Voicemail.
One more time, and on the third ring, an answer. The voice was tired and hardened, dried soil sown with bitter seeds.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Rose.”
“Who is this?”
“Colin Pearson.” He tried to keep his voice from slurring.
The sleep cleared from Yates’s voice, replaced by anger. “It’s late, Detective. Why are you calling me?”
“Because I figured the case out,” Colin said. The darkness, drink, and desolation allowed him to do this. A week ago, Colin couldn’t have imagined making a call like this. But life is nothing if not unpredictable.
“We’ve been over this,” Yates said, and now Colin thought he heard a little fear creep in alongside the anger. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m not talking about your husband,” Colin said. He heard the slurring now but didn’t care. “I’m talking about Caleb Benner.”
He could hear her breaths but nothing else. Nothing for maybe ten, twelve seconds.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“You remember Caleb Benner, right? Disappeared back when you were in high school?”
She didn’t reply.
“Last seen by your sister,” Colin continued. “Cops talked to one Cora Yates right there in your house. Same house I interviewed you in, matter of fact. And just like with us, her interview was cut short. So I’m kinda curious to know what conversations went on in the Yates house after the detective left.”
There was a slight tremble in her voice as she spoke, but she managed to keep her composure. Not everyone could, Colin knew. Some suspects just lost their shit entirely when a cop cut close to the bone. But not Rose Yates. She knew cops. Knew everything about the inner workings of police. Or maybe Colin wasn’t in any shape to mount a proper interrogation technique.
“This is a serious breach of protocol,” she said. “Calling me up in the middle of the night, drunk. Harassing me. Accusing me of…of I don’t even know what. But something far beyond your jurisdiction, I know that much. So you can be assured I’ll be contacting your department in the morning.”
“I would expect nothing less,” Colin replied. “They’ll be upset. Maybe I’ll get fired. Probably not. I’m on bereavement leave. Probably just get a reprimand.”
“Bereavement leave?”
“Wife and child,” he said, adding, for no reason he could think of, “Unborn child.” The tears didn’t come this time, probably because he’d released so many of them earlier. Between the alcohol and the crying, Colin was dehydrated, his skin scratchy, his eyes full of burn. “Died a few days ago. So we have that in common, Rose. We each lost a spouse.”
“Oh my god. I’m sorry. I…I don’t know what to say. But that’s still no reason to—”
“Turned out I was right,” he interrupted. “A baby girl. Little girl.”
“Detective, that’s terrible. I think maybe you should go to sleep. Please leave me alone, and I won’t report this call.”
“You want to know what I think, Rose? I think you know what happened to Caleb Benner. ’Cause you wrote about it, didn’t you? In your book. Child of the Steps. So I wanna ask you something.” Colin went from sitting to lying on the couch, staring up at nothing. “What happened on those steps? Your dad mentioned to the cop back then he was having some of them refinished.”
Rose said, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”
Every suspect said that at some point. Some sort of denial. The words were meaningless, Colin knew. It was how they were said that mattered. And there, in Rose’s voice, he heard a crack.
“I think you do,” he told her. “I think your family has a big secret. Maybe the biggest secret in all of Bury.”
“Leave me alone. You can’t be doing this.”
“You’re right,” he conceded. “This is a completely inappropriate phone call, and let it be known…” Colin subdued a belch. “Be known I’m acting on my own, not as a member of Milwaukee’s finest.”
“I’m hanging up now,” Rose said. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“One more thing,” Colin said, hoping to keep
her attention for one more moment. He nuzzled the phone between his cheek and couch cushion, and it hit him how tired he was. Tired as if he were living a dozen lifetimes simultaneously, all of them hard. “Just know you can talk to me,” he continued. “I understand family bonds. Hell, I’ll even tell you something about me related to your book. My wife? She fell down the stairs, too. Right the fuck down the stairs, just like the character in your book. Corey Brownstein. Same initials as Caleb Benner. How ’bout that?”
“Detective—”
“My mom’s a hoarder. Has shit all over the house. Meg just wanted to help her organize, just a little. Though that’s like throwing a pebble into the Grand Canyon. Is that how the saying goes? But she just wanted to help. And Meg, despite being as pregnant as she was, went over to help. First few minutes she was there, she tripped on a box of Tupperware at the top of the stairs. Fell down the steps. Hardwood. Head over heels. Snapped her neck.” Colin listened and watched himself from a distance. Analytically. This man on the couch in the dark, processing what had happened for the first time. Without judgment. Without emotion. “My mom has dementia, which gets worse starting in the afternoon. Sundowner’s syndrome, or some such. And this was in the evening.
“So Meg falls, dies. Baby…baby dies, I’m guessing. Soon after. Little girl, I said that, right? Little girl. Dies. And my mom… She does nothing for, like, two hours. Just sits there with Meg. Can’t process it, so just sits there. Maybe if she called for help right away, my little girl could’ve lived. But my mom? She called me two hours after it happened. And by then, there was no saving anyone.” Colin was close to sleep and, strangely, almost at peace. “It just happened a few days ago. But I’ve already forgiven my mom, because that’s what families do. She’s not a bad person, she just has brain rot. I suppose everything rots eventually.”
Silence on the other end of the phone.
“My point is, Rose, that I know all about families. I get it. And if you ever want to talk to me about your family, you’ll find someone who understands.”
Colin stopped talking. He had nothing more to say on the matter.
Then he pulled the phone out from under his cheek and saw the line had disconnected. Rose had hung up at some point.
The Dead Husband Page 20