Page 90 of Call Off the Dark

“Yeah. And I packed some walnuts I found in the cellar. Maybe I’ll grab us some of the canned peaches I saw down there too.”

She still couldn’t bring herself to meet Isaac’s eyes, not after last night, so she kept her gaze on the table until he disappeared through the cellar door.

“Wade, stick to your plan,” she whispered. “Don’t do anything stupid out there.”

“Meaning?”

“Don’t try to hurt your brother this time.”

“I won’t. It wouldn’t work anyway.” Wade scowled at her. “You can’t hurt someone who’s dead.”

Isaac returned from the cellar just then with a can of peaches, and she looked at him directly for the first time that morning. Those dark eyes, that curious brow, those full lips. The corner of his mouth lifted slightly as he blinked at her, slow and deliberate.

Isaac, Isaac, Isaac.

She looked away. “I think I’ll sew today.”

Helen didn’t sew that day, but she briefly considered sticking the sewing needles into the soft flesh of her thighs, just to see what it would feel like. She decided against it though, for no reason other than she just lost interest in the idea before she had a chance to get her sewing supplies from the closet.

Instead, she walked out to the pond and stood at the water’s edge for a long time, wondering how many stones Virginia Woolf had needed in her pockets to weigh herself down so she could drown.

Then she walked back to the farmhouse and stared at it until the windows started to look like eyes and the door a nose. When she realized there was no mouth anywhere on the house, she thought, Of course not. It’s silent in the grave, like me.

Helen then went to the garden to examine her Brussels sprouts. She still needed to pick off the cabbage worms.

If she cut all the plants off at the soil right now and burned them in the fireplace, would Wade even notice he’d missed Brussels sprouts this fall? It wasn’t a terrible idea.

She went around to the side of the house to collect the ax to do just that, but she ended up sitting down on the stump, and that’s where she was when Agnes emerged from the woods. Agnes waved as she crossed the meadow, but Helen didn’t have the energy to lift her hand from the handle of the ax.

When Agnes reached her, she said, “What’s wrong?”

“Just tired.”

Agnes took a seat on a wobbly bench across from Helen. “Yeah? Tired of what?”

“Tired of being tired.”

“Try hiking through the national forest to get here.”

“Not that kind of tired.”

Agnes nodded softly in understanding. “I know what you mean.”

“Our list is in the house,” Helen said. There were new conversation topics since the last time Agnes had visited, but Helen couldn’t recall exactly what they were anymore. “Remember, there were things you wanted to ask me—about Seattle, I think?”

“Yeah, concerts.” Agnes studied her with a touch of concern. “Hey, want to hear a song?” Agnes pulled earbuds and a music player from her jacket pocket and held them up.

In the last eighteen months, the only music Helen had heard was her instrumental records. She hesitated, then took the buds and put them in her ears. Agnes said the name of an artist Helen didn’t recognize, then explained he was a country singer.

A moment later, a fiddle started playing. The lyrics and melody were the opposite of how Helen felt: a guy and girl and a jukebox and last call at the bar. But the song reminded her how much she liked the crisp sound of a snare drum and the quick slide of a guitar and the rhyme of happier words, even if they no longer reflected her own life. When the last note faded, she sighed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. It was a heavy sound.

She took the earbuds out, and Agnes asked, “What’s going on, Helen?”

“Wade’s brother is visiting us.”

“What’s he like?”

“Terrible,” Helen said quietly.