A Reliable Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

suitcase. Just begin, she thought. Just
     move forward to say hello; the rest, somehow, will take care of itself.
    “Mr. Truitt. I’m Catherine Land.”
    “You’re not her. I have a photograph.”
    “It’s of someone else. It’s my cousin India.”
    He could feel the eyes of the townspeople watching them, the eyes taking it all in, this deception. It was too much to bear.
    “You need a proper coat. This is the country.”
    “It’s what I have. I’m sorry. The picture. I’m sorry, but I can explain.”
    This deceit in front of the whole town, this being made a fool of, again, in front of everybody. His heart raced and his legs
     felt bloodless.
    “We can’t stand here all night. Whoever you are. Give me your case.”
    She handed it to him as he took his hand from his pocket. Briefly, she felt its warmth.
    “This is all. This is everything?”
    “I can explain. I don’t have much. I thought . . .”
    “We can’t stand here in a blizzard, with everybody . . . we can’t stay here.” He looked at her without warmth or welcome.
     “This begins in a lie. I want you to know I know that.”
    He took the picture from his pocket, her picture, and showed it to her, as though bringing it out from his pocket would somehow
     make her become the shy, homely woman caught there. She looked at it.
    “Whoever you are, you’re not this woman.”
    “I will explain, Mr. Truitt. I’m not here to make a fool of you.”
    “No. You won’t. Whatever else, you’re a liar.”
    He turned, and she followed him across the deserted platform to a carriage tied up at the side. The nervous horses stamped
     and blew great jets of steam from their nostrils while Ralph Truitt put her suitcase in the back and strapped it on with thick
     leather straps. Without a word, he handed her into her seat.
    He vanished in the hurling snow, reappeared and climbed into his seat. He looked at her, full in the face for the first time.
     “Maybe you thought I was a fool. You were wrong.”
    He snapped the reins, and the horses trotted smartly into the white void. They rode in silence. The lights from the windows
     of the houses glowed softly, as though at a great distance. She couldn’t tell how near or far anything was from the carriage,
     in the snow. She couldn’t tell how many stores or houses there were. She never saw the turnings until they made them. He knew.
     The horses knew. She was a stranger here.
    The snow silenced the wagon wheels. There was no conversation. She was floating in a soundless void in the middle of nowhere.
    “Are there many people?”
    “Where?”
    “In town.”
    “Two thousand. About. More or less every year. Depending.”
    “On what?”
    “On whether more die than are born.”
    They said nothing else. They floated through the snow, the glow of houses in the distance, each one a family, each a series
     of entwined lives, while they sat entirely separate and alone.
    Ralph had nothing to say. He had expected things, and now she was here, whoever she was, and suddenly everything was different.
     In every house they passed, there were lives that were wholly known to him. In these houses, the people knew one another;
     they knew him as well. He had held their babies, been to their weddings, been shocked by their sudden flights into madness
     and rage. He was and he wasn’t a part of their lives. He was there and he had done what was required of him, what was expected.
    They went crazy in the cold; they went deep into the heart of their religion and emerged as lunatics. But even this was familiar.
     Sane, they wanted to believe that they were the sort of people whose babies had been held and cuddled by Ralph Truitt, and
     he found it easy enough to foster the illusion that these things mattered to him. Still, their glowing lives, their families,
     were intertwined in ways that he couldn’t even imagine.
    But this woman was not expected. He was angry. He was confused. He had read her letter until it fell apart in his