Page 74 of Call Off the Dark

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“It’s an active investigation, and it’s all new, so we’re trying to consider every angle.”

Every angle. Helen knew that possibly meant her. It was possible that even with the eyewitness, Calhoun suspected Helen in a murder-for-hire plot. She should stay on guard and lawyer up.

But her innocence was not the foremost worry in her head. Worse things were killing her slowly.

Like how there’d been no sign of forced entry. That meant that either they had accidentally left their door unlocked or the intruder was very good at picking locks. The lock on their apartment door had been installed upside down. To engage the deadbolt, you had to turn it clockwise instead of counterclockwise. Tyler always double-checked the door before bedtime, to ensure neither of them had twisted the lock the wrong way, but she couldn’t remember seeing him do it that night. He’d fallen asleep on the couch, so maybe he’d forgotten. Helen should have checked the lock every single night herself too.

This ate at her.

At the cemetery, when she stood stone-faced next to Tyler’s family as strange men lowered the coffin into the ground, she knew Tyler’s body was inside the casket. She knew he was dead. But she also had the sense she was living inside a twisted fairy tale, something make-believe. She felt as if life had turned into a long tunnel she was walking through, trying not to touch the walls.

Afterward at the wake, Helen steeled herself when she saw Evelyn weaving through guests to get to her. Evelyn’s insistence on always keeping a stiff upper lip would be too much for a day like today. Helen reminded herself that she didn’t have to put up with the Wicked Stepmother anymore. Evelyn hadn’t said a word to Helen at the cemetery, had just given her a quick hug and a look that she’d been unable to read. She suspected Evelyn thought Tyler’s murder was somehow her fault. Maybe because of the presumably unlocked door. Maybe because she didn’t have a phone next to the bed. Maybe because it was Helen who had alerted the masked man that they were awake at the end of the hall. There were many ways to lay the blame, and seeing Evelyn’s pinched face approach, Helen braced for it.

When Evelyn reached her, the older woman grabbed Helen’s hand and pulled her into a side hallway, away from prying eyes. “Oh, Helen. I’ve never seen two people better suited for each other than you and Tyler.” Evelyn’s face crumpled. “You two gave me a strange kind of hope I’d never felt in my life before.”

“Oh, Evelyn.” Helen squeezed the woman’s hand.

“A few nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. Titanic was playing on TV, and there was the scene where Rose jumps from the lifeboat back onto the ship. I never understood that scene before. I always thought, Stupid girl. You’re safe. Why get back on the boat? Watching it a few days ago, I finally understood.” Evelyn put her arms around Helen and said the next part softly in Helen’s ear. “You would have jumped back on the ship for Tyler, and he for you. And I’m just so broken for you. I’m just so furious for you, and maybe this is selfish, but I’m so furious for me too, because it took away that hope I had about love being sweet and good and not just transactional. I’m just so mad at the whole world right now.”

Helen started to cry, right there in Evelyn’s arms.

Later, some of the guests at the wake would say that Evelyn had been crying too, but because the two women had been in the side hallway, no one other than Helen would ever know for sure. And even though Helen thought there was nothing shameful about crying, she had promised Evelyn—who was embarrassed by her display—that she wouldn’t tell a soul. And she never did.

About a week after the funeral, Helen saw Tyler crossing the street as she and her mother left the grocery store parking lot.

“Stop the car!” Helen cried out.

Her mother braked. “What?”

Helen was out the passenger door without an explanation and across the street, moving faster than she had since Tyler’s death. She followed him into the post office, her heart expanding. He was unlocking a PO Box, and she ran right up to him.

He turned to face her, confusion in his brown—not blue—eyes, and she took a step back.

It wasn’t Tyler.

Back in the car, her mother asked, “What happened?”

Helen said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

So they didn’t.

After that, she started seeing Tyler everywhere.

Tyler had died on the bedroom floor without Helen there. She hadn’t been holding him in her arms when he’d passed. He’d been alone and scared and in pain. Sometimes when she thought about that, she couldn’t stop herself from hitting something: a piece of furniture, the wall, her own leg.

The tallest bridge in Seattle was the Aurora Bridge. It was 167 feet above the water. Not a bad height.

Her boss, Darius, waited four days past the one-month mark to call and see if she was ready to come back to work.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Hanging in there,” Helen said, pulling a fleece blanket up to her chin.

It’s what people wanted to hear and it’s what she needed to say if she wanted to keep her job, but it was past noon and she was still in bed. She knew she couldn’t just float around her parents’ house for the rest of her life though. Perhaps work would be a distraction. Going into the office would require washing her hair more than once a week, but she could probably figure out a way to do that.

Darius asked, “When would you like to come back?”