The Wife He Buried Alive novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Four Candles

Milo came home on the second Saturday in December, three days before he turned four.

He walked in through the front door of the house on Linden Street on his own two feet.

He wore a knit hat and a puffy blue coat, and he held Pickle by one ear.

He stopped in the hall and looked up at the ceiling.

"It's so tall," he said.

"It's a regular house, bug."

"It's a castle."

He ran from room to room with Pickle bouncing behind him.

Bev followed with her hands out, saying "Walk, walk, walk."

Winston stood in the hall with the suitcase in his hand and didn't put it down.

"He's home," he said.

"He is."

"I thought I'd never see him in this house."

I took the suitcase from him and set it on the floor.

"You'd better see it, then," I said, and pushed him after our son.

The party was the Tuesday after.

It was small, because the doctors had said small, and because I wanted it that way.

Bev made the cake, a lopsided gray elephant with a marshmallow trunk.

Winston had hung paper stars across the dining room, badly, so that half of them drooped.

He had also, I discovered, bought four hundred balloons and filled the living room with them.

"Four hundred," I said, standing in the doorway, ankle deep.

"Four hundred and one. The man threw one in."

"Winston."

"He's turning four, Lin."

"He's going to pop them all in an hour."

"That's the plan."

At five the guests arrived.

There were no board members and no donors, and not one person who had sat at my funeral.

Bev's sister came down from the north with a casserole and a bag of knitted socks.

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