My Husband Is Dead Or Is He? novel · Chapter 9 of 24
Chapter 9: Storm Night
The storm came in off Superior on Wednesday night and took the power at nine.
I lay upstairs listening to the wind work at the shingles.
At eleven I gave up and went down in my socks and my father's old cardigan.
He was sitting on the couch in the dark with a candle on the table and his boots on the floor.
He had pulled the curtain back and was watching the lake.
"You can't sleep either," I said.
"I'm on watch."
"For what?"
"For whatever comes up your driveway." He moved over and I stayed on my side of the couch. "Your mother-in-law has a key."
"She has two," I said. "I changed the lock this afternoon and she's had a locksmith before I was done."
"Then I'll sit here."
I pulled my knees up under the quilt and watched the candle.
For a while we didn't talk.
The windows rattled and the house ticked.
"What did you miss most?" I asked. "Over there."
I thought he'd say the lake, or my cooking.
"The press," he said. "The sound of you in the bindery. I used to hear it through the phone, the slow thump when you pressed a spine and the click of the screw. I'd lie there and count them."
"You didn't count."
"Sixty-two on a good night."
I laughed, and it came out wet.
"Nobody has ever listened to that."
"I did," he said. "Every night."
I should have heard how that sounded.
Instead I put my head back against the cushion and told him about the Hendricks Bible, the leather one with the cracked cover I had rebound in October.
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