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closest he’d ever come to expressing something.
    But that wasn’t all. Carving those words had also been an act of penance. It was something he’d hoped would relieve his conscience, doing a good deed like that, but still he felt guilty. Even now, ten years later, he felt guilty. Because Conrad, like most husbands, kept more than one secret from his wife. And the worst secret—the one he regretted the most—was that one time he had kissed his sister-in-law.
    He and Denise had been married for two years. She had just gotten pregnant with Kyle. They were hosting a New Year’s Eve party and of course Denise didn’t drink. But Conrad did. He got plastered. It was a good party though, everyone enjoyed themselves, and as the guests started to leave Denise said she was tired and went upstairs to bed. The guests thinned and thinned until it was just Conrad and Jessica. Jessica was a year younger than Denise. For the most part he and his sister-in-law got along fine. They smiled, played the part of happy in-laws, though Conrad always sensed that Jessica was jealous Denise had gotten Conrad instead of her. Not that Jessica really wanted him, but rather the honor that came with being a Hunter’s wife. Jessica was a flirt, she dated a lot, and almost every weekend she went out to the clubs and hooked up with some random guy. She had once modeled when she was a teenager and now worked as a legal aide in the city. She had a small sexy face, large dry lips, and when she wore her mini-skirts her gray legs were flawless. Back in Artemis, had Conrad not have been so shy, Jessica would have no doubt been the first girl he would have chased. Even at the bar, standing in the shadows, he’d had his eye on her, because there was something sexy about Jessica, something almost forbidden. But Denise had been the one who approached him, the one who he had fallen for, and he loved his wife more than anything in the world.
    But the party ended and he was drunk and it was just the two of them there on the couch. They started talking, Jessica telling him about what it was like growing up with Denise, how she always felt she had to exist up to the bar her sister had set, how even though her parents always denied it Jessica could tell they favored Denise more. How no matter how well she did in school, how many extracurricular activities she went out for, Denise somehow always one-upped her. And the entire time Jessica started inching closer and closer to Conrad, and before he knew it her hand was on his leg and she was leaning in and they were kissing. And though something in Conrad’s dead mind told him to stop he continued kissing her back, feeling her dead tongue dart into his mouth, pushing his dead tongue into her mouth, and when she started undoing his belt and whispered into his ear, Let’s see just how big that broadsword of yours really is , Conrad pushed her away and stood up. He looked around the existing room like he had never seen it before—the TV, stereo, chairs, fireplace all foreign objects—and when he looked at Jessica there on the couch, pouting her large dry lips, he realized his terrible mistake and turned and hurried out of the room.
    He had meant to tell Denise about it the next morning, before Jessica had a chance, but the opportunity never presented itself. He waited until the next day but again the opportunity just wasn’t there, and every day that passed he kept telling himself he would tell her tomorrow, until those tomorrows turned into weeks, those weeks turned into months, those months into years (again, carving those three words did nothing to relieve his guilt), and then Kyle was almost ten and Conrad had hesitated in killing a zombie and now he was being transferred to some other job, a job so top secret even the Government would deny its existence.
    As far as he knew, Jessica never told Denise. The subject of their almost-tryst never came up between Conrad and his sister-in-law. But it was always there, right