Page 66 of Call Off the Dark

“You don’t have to lie for him. I haven’t always been the best brother.” Isaac picked up a blanket from the basket next to the chair and offered it to her. “Do you want me to make you some tea?”

Surprised by the offer, Helen shook her head. “No.” She took the blanket. “Thank you.” She wrapped it around herself. “Can I ask you a question though?”

“If you sit down.”

She sat in the rocking chair opposite him. “When was the last time you saw Wade?”

“Maybe a week before he left. He didn’t even say goodbye. None of us knew he was leaving.”

“Do you mind if I ask about your scar?”

“It healed up pretty nasty, huh?”

“No, it’s not that noticeable,” she said.

Isaac made an expression that said he knew otherwise.

“I mean, it’s not that noticeable when you’re wearing a shirt,” she said.

A smile spread across his face. “I think you just made a joke, Helen.”

She smiled softly. “How did you get the scar?”

“Minor farming accident, and let’s leave it at that.”

She nodded. It seemed like confirmation enough that Wade was wrong about the extent of Isaac’s injuries.

“So what about you and Wade?” Isaac asked. “What’s your love story?”

“Our love story? We met in the city. He wanted to buy land and move away, and three months later, he did and I went with him.”

“Sounds pretty spontaneous.”

“It was. I met Wade during a difficult time in my life. There were things I needed to get away from, and he had this idea of simple living.” Helen shrugged. “I guess I just wanted to start over. I guess it sounded romantic.”

“Is it?”

The silence that followed his question spoke volumes. Helen knew she should say something, put an appropriately positive sheen over the top of her marriage story, but she didn’t. Instead, she looked at Isaac for a long moment and then stood.

She said, “I should try to get a couple more hours of sleep.”

Isaac nodded and his eyes returned to the Poe book in his lap. They stayed there while Helen folded the blanket, and they stayed there while she put it away in the basket. She knew he wasn’t really reading the words on the page though. He was just pretending.

She knew this because the entire time, out of the corner of her eye, she watched him watching her out of the corner of his.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Helen rolled over in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, surprised by the glimmer coming through the sheer bedroom window curtains. Surprised to find herself alone. The clock said six minutes past ten o’clock. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in that late. She pulled a light sweater on over her nightgown.

In the bathroom, she saw the towel she’d given Isaac was draped over the side of the tub. She touched it. Still damp.

Farther down the hall, she found the door to the guest room ajar and the bed made. The corners of the quilt weren’t tucked as precisely as they had been before Isaac had slept in it, but his effort was obvious.

In the kitchen, she looked out the window and saw Wade’s truck was gone. She opened the refrigerator, and it appeared as though nothing was missing from inside. She wondered if Wade had taken any food with him for lunch. In the sink, there was one bowl filled with milky water and a little dried oatmeal crusted on the rim. A single spoon lay next to it.

Helen walked back to the guest room and sat down on the edge of the bed. It creaked under her weight, and she imagined it had made that same sound whenever Isaac had turned over in the middle of the night. The pajamas she’d given him were folded neatly on top of the desk next to the Yeats book, the candles, and the clean blanket he hadn’t used.

The house lay still as a cemetery, her head silent as a grave.