Page 103 of Call Off the Dark

“Your leg is bleeding,” Wade said.

“Oh, right. Um . . .” Helen didn’t want to go back into the hall again in case Isaac was still there.

“I’ll get something for it,” Wade said, and he left the room.

When he returned, he tended to the cut with a wet washcloth, then dried it with a second clean cloth.

As he carefully rebandaged it for her, Helen almost started to cry.

Seated between the two men, Helen used her fork to push the rice, beans, and pork around on her plate. It was the first decent meal they’d had in days, but she had no appetite.

She turned to Isaac and asked, “How much longer do you think you’ll be staying with us?”

“I don’t know,” Isaac said, and Wade made a sound in his throat that was barely audible but in the silence of the house, they could all hear it.

Isaac smiled softly at her. “However long you’ll have me.”

Have me. Helen felt the heat in her face and looked down at her food, afraid Wade would see it.

“But don’t worry, Helen,” Isaac said. “I promise you won’t have to cook for three much longer.”

Under the table, she felt a boot come to rest gently against her stocking foot. An inch farther and it would have crushed her toes. She looked from one man to the other, but neither met her eyes as they ate their food. Whoever it was probably couldn’t even feel her foot through the thick leather of their shoe.

She pulled her foot back, and as soon as she did, Isaac looked at her. He raised an eyebrow.

She put her fork down. Her meal was almost untouched, but she felt that if she ate another bite she might get sick.

“This is good, Helen,” Wade said as he swallowed around a bite.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

There were no drugs in Wade’s dinner tonight. If he was spinning deliberate lies about Isaac instead of experiencing true delusions, the drugs wouldn’t help.

But even more so, there was no way Helen could have watched her husband eat a drugged dinner after she’d slept with his brother.

Chapter Forty-Three

“Wade, is Isaac here for his half of the money?”

Helen stood in front of the closed bathroom door, and Wade sat in a bathtub full of water, cornered, wet, and naked. Not so easy for him to walk away in a huff and avoid the conversation. He stopped scrubbing his shoulders and looked at her coolly.

“His half of the money?” he repeated.

“From the sale of the farm.”

“What’s a ghost going to do with money?”

“Oh, God, Wade. Will you stop it?” she snapped.

“Not that this matters, because Isaac was dead when I sold it,” Wade said, “but I owned the farm one hundred percent when he was alive too. My dad was old school and put it all in the oldest son’s name.”

Helen’s eyes narrowed. If the title had really been in Wade’s name, that meant he wouldn’t have had a motive to try to eliminate Isaac to inherit it all.

Wade took in her expression and said, “You don’t believe me?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think at this point.”

She gave him a tired stare and went into their bedroom.