Page 59 of Call Off the Dark

It was the first time in the year and a half they’d lived there that he’d suggested such a thing. Helen felt a small burst in her chest—it was the little girl inside her thinking about her mother—but just as quickly, she felt the heavy weight of impossibility. She couldn’t imagine the woman she’d become showing up at her parents’ doorstep in Seattle. Was she just supposed to throw all her clothes in their washing machine and flip on their TV? Eat takeout food and carry on conversations about the late husband she wished were still here and the replacement husband that sometimes she wished was not?

“I don’t want to go to the city.” And as Helen answered Wade, she realized a part of her wanted to stay to see this drama unfold. The upheaval of Isaac’s arrival was the most exciting thing that had happened to her since her life had been resurrected into this endless winter.

Wade’s voice turned gentle. “I’ll protect you.”

After a pause, Helen nodded, and Wade leaned in closer. He wanted to kiss her, so she closed her eyes and let him. When he deepened the kiss and rolled on top of her, she opened her eyes and stared distantly at the ceiling, escaping the moment.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Four years ago

There was a time when Helen temporarily misplaced her first marriage, a time when her best laid plans for life and love crumbled into six months of sadness she couldn’t understand. She just knew there were too many nights when she climbed out of bed because she felt like crying, the painful source of unknown origin, and she went into the living room to wipe her tears in secret. And there were too many mornings when she and Tyler rode the elevator together to floors four and seven in the same office building, still at their same jobs, and he was content with that—but deep down, she just . . . wasn’t.

Helen was almost thirty, Tyler was thirty-two, and they had saved money. Buying a house was the next logical step.

So they walked through Craftsman cottages in Phinney Ridge and townhouses in Fremont, crunching on the orange and yellow autumn leaves on front porches, and real estate agents said things like “The bones of this one are really great,” and “You’re going to love this built-in pantry,” while Helen silently crunched numbers in her head. They could afford a place like this, but only barely.

Not so very long ago, buying a house together had sounded like the most exciting thing in the world, but now that it was upon them, Helen couldn’t think of anything more soul-crushing.

Helen put a mint on her tongue. The vapors hung in the air and made her nose sting. Her heart rate was rising, yet she was simultaneously exhausted, and the mint gave her a needed little kick for the upcoming phone call.

She was now a senior manager, and she even had her own office at the marketing firm: No more cubicle! Better pay! She oversaw a team of fourteen employees, and their biggest client was Boom Now Energy Drinks. The caffeinated drinks were full of chemicals, artificial flavors, and food coloring, and they had flavors in refreshing names like Passion Guava Party and Goodtime Goji.

The clock said eight minutes to eleven when her phone rang. Stan at Boom Now always called early or late, never on time.

“This is Helen,” she said into the receiver.

“I don’t have all day for this call,” Stan said. He never announced his name, as if Helen should know his disembodied voice anywhere. “We need to get down to brass tacks, Helen.”

“Brass tacks. Let’s go.”

“It looks like shit. Nobody’s gonna pick up the can in the store if it looks like that.”

It was the eighteenth can design Helen’s team had done, each new design based on Stan’s highly specific feedback.

“Nobody’s going to pick up the can at all, Stan, if we don’t finalize a design,” she said, then laughed lightly because Stan liked direct, blunt communication, so long as she let him be the alpha.

“Don’t be upset, Helen, but it’s not your team’s best work.”

“Do you have specific changes?”

“For starters, I said turquoise, and this looks more like seafoam green.”

Helen put her head down on her desk and thought, Here we go again.

Stan continued, “I don’t know what brainiac thought yellow text would look good on seafoam green.”

She inhaled slowly and said nothing, because Stan himself had suggested yellow.

“The press release is too long.”

Because he’d asked for additional information about the company to be added in.

“It reads like an eight-year-old wrote it. Okay, that’s unfair of me.” Stan laughed. “More like a nine-year-old.”

She lifted her head. I think you’d be happier with a different firm, Stan. It’s time we parted ways.

That’s what Helen wanted to say. That’s what she almost did say. But she had already talked to her boss, Darius, about saying these things to Stan. Darius had reviewed the contracts and determined the firm would have to return the $140,000 that Boom Now had already paid.