Page 94 of Call Off the Dark

A long moment passed before Isaac answered. “If I’m right, I don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“You think he’s dangerous?”

Isaac looked away, shaking his head, but it didn’t appear to be a no. It seemed to be concerned disbelief.

She stepped back.

“Helen, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’ll be okay, but just be careful. Wade’s not a man who likes to be challenged by anyone. He sold the farm without even consulting me.”

Helen stilled. Because she’d always believed Wade to be an only child, she’d never considered the conditions of his inheritance. “You got half the money though, right?”

“I didn’t get a penny.”

Helen felt her breath quicken. Wade owed his brother money, and that brother was here now to collect. Everyone was playing a different side of some twisted game. She envisioned the tractor driving over the top of Isaac with Wade at the wheel of it. Had he wanted to eliminate Isaac to avoid sharing the inheritance? Wade had never seemed motivated by money, but maybe she was wrong about that too.

Quietly, she said, “You didn’t say anything about this before.”

Isaac shrugged. “It is what it is.”

Helen walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway. She found Wade in the bedroom removing his dirty work clothes.

“How are you getting along with Isaac?” she asked.

“He’s a ghost, and he hates me. We’re not getting along.”

“You spent all day together in the trees. Did you talk?”

“I tried, but he mostly just sat and watched me work with this look on his face.” Wade kicked off his pants, down to just his underwear now.

“What kind of a look?”

“Not a good one.” Wade stalked past her to the door. “I’m taking a bath.”

“But who will run the water for you?”

He ignored her and exited.

Helen stayed in the bedroom, thinking about the things Isaac had said. She didn’t know what unsettled her more: the notion that Wade might be lying to her or the notion that she’d been falling for it all this time.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next morning in the garden, Helen squished all the nasty little cabbage worms between her fingers. She wasn’t going to burn the Brussels sprouts after all. Once she was done tending to all her garden tasks, she returned her garden tools to their spot without washing them like she usually did. She hesitated when she saw the handgun she’d hidden there. Wade and Isaac were in the trees again, so there would be no one here to see the gun or hear it fire.

Helen arranged empty cans on the wobbly bench in the side yard. She lined up her shot and pulled the trigger. A miss. It had been a while since she’d fired a gun.

She had almost twenty-four years to get ready to kill the masked man upon his release from prison. Plenty of time. So it shouldn’t have bothered her to miss as much as it did.

Helen took a deep breath, steadied her hand, and fired again. This time, she hit the can.

She spent the next half hour shooting cans off the bench, the stump, the rusty wheelbarrow, and the ladder, until she was confident she could hit a person as well as she could hit a can.

Then she reloaded the gun and hid it in the same spot again. Wade couldn’t be trusted with it.

During the day’s chores, Helen alternated between trying not to think about the kiss with Isaac and reliving it in her head.

Last night, she’d gone to bed as soon as the meds had made Wade sleepy and he’d sunk into the mattress. She’d put on her nightgown and climbed in next to him so she wouldn’t be “alone” in the house with Isaac. No more secret meetings. She was Wade’s wife; she needed to remember that. She had lain there in bed for at least two hours thinking about the kiss until she’d finally convinced herself to write it off as a moment of bad judgment. She was allowed those moments once or twice in her life, wasn’t she?

She was lucky, really. She lived in a time and place where she could make mistakes and not pay gravely for them. Women in history—the ones who actually lived the type of life Helen and Wade had contrived—often paid the steepest penalties for small indiscretions.