The Dead Husband by Carter Wilson (best summer reads of all time .txt) 📗

money. You think I don’t know that? You think it doesn’t stress me out? It does, but not nearly as much as taking your money does.”

My voice has risen multiple decibels, and I suddenly picture Max pressing up against a wall in the hallway, eavesdropping. I walk around my father and peek out the office doorway but see nothing.

“You still have answered my question about Riley.”

I walk back to him. “I don’t have to. You’ll continue to believe whatever narrative is burned into your brain.”

He downs the last of his drink, and I can’t remember if that’s his second or third since I came in.

“You have blood on your hands,” he says. “You do, I do, your sister does. That doesn’t go away, and this book of yours will draw attention to it.”

“I had to write it,” I tell him. “There’s nothing incriminating in the book, but I had to write what I did. What happened… It crushes me. The pain hasn’t gone away.” I think of my recurring nightmare. “If anything, it’s gotten worse. I can’t tell anyone. Not even Riley knew. Only you and Cora, and even just putting that one scene in my book was a relief valve. Can’t you understand that?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Don’t you feel the same thing? The guilt?”

“By the time I came home that night, the damage was done. I just cleaned up the mess.”

There are moments when I wonder about my mother, what she was like, what she sounded like when she laughed, or if she ever laughed at all. I don’t remember her, but in my mind, she was a beautiful, generous, gentle soul, and whatever good qualities I may have inherited I got from her. So if she really was that type of person, what did she see in Logan Yates? What was it about him that allowed her to forgive his cold shoulder to the world, his utter lack of empathy?

How did I come from this man?

“I just don’t understand how you don’t have any remorse,” I say.

“Change the book,” my father repeats. “At the very least, change the boy’s name. That should be easy enough to do.”

Seconds pass, and I’m left feeling unsteadied by alcohol and weak-kneed with anxiety. I don’t want to admit he’s right about this. But he just may be.

“I’ll try,” I say. “The best I can do is try.”

“You will. And if you run into any problems with your publisher, you come tell me.”

“And you’re just going to fix everything?”

“Apparently, it’s what I do best.”

He sets his glass down, leaving it for the housecleaner to deal with. Then my father walks away without saying another word, and as he disappears into the hallway, I’m jealous at not having inherited his dispassionate nature.

How wonderful it must be to feel nothing at all.

Twenty

Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

Colin Pearson lay next to his wife in bed, his breathing still elevated from sex. He reached out and touched Meg’s hand, feeling her warmth spread into him.

Anchor, he thought. It was the word that came to him often when he thought of Meg.

She’s my anchor.

He wasn’t quite sure where he’d drift off to without her, but he knew he’d drift. All the way out to open sea.

Silence passed between them, comfortable and familiar, minutes sliding by in the dark. When she spoke, her voice jolted him from the cusp of sleep.

“I don’t think she did it.”

Colin turned his head to her voice. “Who?”

“The Yates woman. I don’t think she did it.”

He took a deep breath and sank lower into his pillow. “No?”

Colin was leaving in a couple days for his trip to Bury. He’d told Meg the high-level details of the case, and she’d even started reading the most recent J. L. Sharp book.

“I don’t know what her motive would be,” Meg said. “Women kill out of anger or for money. We know they didn’t have money.”

“Maybe she didn’t know the life-insurance policy had lapsed,” Colin said.

“Maybe,” Meg conceded. “But I doubt it. And if it was about anger, there probably would have been evidence of a fight. Was there?”

“Not that was noted by the detective working the case,” he replied. “But that’s why I’m going out there. To ask the questions that weren’t asked. Find out about their relationship. See what she’ll be willing to tell me.”

“If she talks to you at all,” Meg said. “She might just shut the door in your face.”

“What, on this sweet face?”

Meg laughed and Colin felt her turn in the bed, and he did the same. He suddenly felt her lips on his as she moved in toward him and then her palm on his cheek.

“You do have a sweet face,” she said, extending for another kiss. “I just can’t imagine not having you. You would have to screw up really badly to make me want to leave you.”

The question popped into his head, and he asked it before he fully realized how morbid it was.

“What would I have to do to make you want to kill me?”

“God, Colin.”

“I mean it,” he said. “What kind of thing would make you want me gone forever? And not just a spur-of-the-moment killing. Something you planned for, knowing all too well the consequences of getting caught.”

“I don’t even want to think of it.”

“It’s helpful.”

The ensuing silence was heavy, and Colin knew what Meg was doing. She was running through all the scenarios in her mind and trying not to make them so real as to believe they could happen. But she was thinking about it.

Finally, out of that silence, she spoke.

“I think if I found out you loved someone else,” she said, a crack in her voice. “Not just having an affair but truly loved someone else. Maybe even had another family. Maybe even had a kid with her. I don’t think I could handle that.”

Colin knew how unlikely the scenario was. In love with someone else? A hidden family? A secret love child? That sounded like a nightmare.

“Even then, I’m not sure I could kill you,”