My Husband Is Dead Or Is He? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room Nine

Marlo meets a scarred man in a dark motel room who says he is Hamish, and his mother's car pulls up outside.

The Harbor Light Motel sat at the edge of the ore docks, and half its sign had been dark since I was a kid.

Skye parked her Subaru across the lot with the engine running.

"Twenty minutes," she said. "If you're not out, I'm coming in with my nursing bag and a very bad attitude."

"It's my husband in there."

"It's somebody with your husband's phone," Skye said. "Go."

I walked down the row of doors to number nine.

It was open an inch, and no light showed through the gap.

I pushed it with two fingers.

"Marlo," said a voice in the dark.

It was the voice from my phone, and it was the voice from every night for three years.

My knees went soft, and I held the doorframe.

"Don't turn on the lamp," he said. "Please. Not yet."

"Three years," I said. "You let me think you were dead for three years."

"I let you think I was in Rotterdam. That's different."

I couldn't see his face.

I could see a shape in the chair by the window, and the tip of a ball cap, and one hand on his knee wrapped in white gauze.

"Where have you been?" I said.

"There was a fire at the warehouse." His voice was rough. "I was in a hospital in Rotterdam for a long time. When I came out my mother had already told everyone I was dead."

"Last night you told me you couldn't come home."

"Because I found out she was going to be at your door this morning. I couldn't walk in and have it out with her in front of you."

"So you had her do it first."

"I had you hear it from me first," he said. "That's why I called. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Marlo."

I had a hundred things to say, and they all came out as one.

"Turn on the lamp."

A pause.

"You won't like what you see."

"Turn it on."

The lamp clicked.

It was a cheap brass one with a yellow shade, and it threw light on the left side of his face.

He had a short dark beard that stopped where the scars began.

They ran from his ear down his jaw and neck into his collar, tight and shiny, and the hand on his knee was wrapped to the knuckles.

He didn't look at me.

"I've been a coward about this," he said. "Say something."

I tried to find my husband in that face.

The eyes were right, gray-green with a darker ring, and the long mouth was right too.

The rest was a stranger who sat very still and waited for me to run.

"Say my name," I said.

"Marlo."

"Say something that only you would know."

He thought about it.

"You hum when you're gluing spines," he said. "You don't know you do it. The first night I called, I could hear the press ticking in the background and you were humming the song from the sailboat commercial."

I laughed, once, and it broke in my throat.

"Anything else?"

"You told me the ice on the lake sounds like furniture moving. You told me your father's glue pot still smells like his coat. You told me about the cabin at Gunflint with the bad stove, and that you stood in the doorway in my shirt and burned the eggs."

Heat came into my face.

I crossed the room before I could think.

He looked up at last, and the lamp showed me the whole ruined side of his jaw.

I put my palm against it.

The skin was ridged and warm, and under it a pulse went hard against my hand.

He stopped breathing.

He didn't lean into it and he didn't pull away.

He sat with his good hand fisted on his knee and let mine stay.

"Does it hurt?" I said.

"Not that." His voice came out low. "Not your hand."

"Then why are you shaking?"

"Because it's been three years since anyone touched me like that," he said.

I should have asked him one more question.

I should have asked about the first fight we had, or the first thing he ever said to me, or what the vow card said.

Instead I stood there with my hand on his face, so glad I couldn't think.

"Your mother tried to hand me your ashes," I said.

"I know."

"She'll say you're a liar. She'll say you're after my shares."

"I know," he said. "I need you not to sign anything, and I need you to give me one week."

"For what?"

"To make her say it out loud."

Outside, tires crunched on gravel.

I turned my head, and he went rigid under my hand.

Headlights swept across the curtain, and an engine cut off.

A car door shut, and then another one.

I knew the sound of those heels on the walk.

They were slow and even, and they stopped at the door of number nine.

Three soft knocks.

"Marlo, honey?" said Bernadette. "I know you're in there. Open the door."

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