The Loveliest Dead Read Free

her sweats, was at work on the cupboards opposite them. The counter was covered with newspapers, and as she painted, she stood on a green folding stepladder.  
    Martha sat in the breakfast nook reading the Global Inquisitor while Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” played on her radio and tendrils of steam rose from a mug of green tea. Martha read all the tabloids every week, but the Inquisitor was her favorite.  
    The sky outside was dark with gunmetal-gray clouds. A strong wind had come up and whistled around the corners of the house. The rusty chains of the swings on the old set in the backyard screeched and rattled as they blew in the wind.  
    “A UFO landed in the middle of a park in Oslo, Norway,” Martha said, “and aliens came out and took a little boy off the monkey bars, hauled him into the flying saucer, and flew away.”  
    Jenna smiled and shook her head without turning away from her painting. “Mom, don’t you think if that really happened, it would be on the news?”  
    “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not.” Martha turned a page and adjusted her glasses. Her silver hair was short and curly. Her cane stood against the wall beside the breakfast nook’s bench. “They’re too busy with who’s screwin’ who in Hollywood and Washington. They’re not much different than the tabloids, you know.”  
    “Well, I won’t argue with that.”
    “The Binghams cleared another house.”
    “The who?”
    “Arthur and Mavis Bingham, the occult investigators. Remember? I’ve told you about them before. They cleared another house possessed by demons. In Connecticut this time.”  
    Jenna dipped her brush in the can of paint on the counter. “Do they do yards? Maybe they could clear all the weeds and ivy outside.”  
    Martha laughed.
    “How’s your bedroom coming along?” Jenna asked. “Have you got all your things unpacked and put away?”
    “I’ve unpacked everything but my photo albums and jewelry. That’s a big room. Even with all my junk, it’s going to look half empty.”  
    “I promise to get those boxes out of there soon,” Jenna said. “But like you said, it’s a big room, and I needed someplace to put that stuff until I can unpack it.”
    “No problem,” she said. She took a sip of her tea and turned another page.
    After a set of commercials on the radio, Doris Day sang “Sentimental Journey.”
    “I hope Miles is doing okay at school,” Jenna said.
    “Oh, our Miles always does well at school. Hasn’t he always gotten good grades?”
    “That’s not what I mean. Yes, he’s a great student, a lot better than I ever was.”
    “You did well in school, Jenna.”
    “But it was always such a struggle for me. I really had to work at it. It seems to come naturally for Miles. He’s very smart. No, I mean I hope he’s making friends. He’s so shy.”  
    “He said this morning he’d made a friend.”
    “He said he’d met a boy—that’s not the same thing. He never complains about anything, he keeps everything inside.” Josh was the same way , she thought as she dipped the brush again.  
    Mommy—
    “Last year,” Jenna said, “there was a boy at school who picked on him every day. Miles didn’t say a word about it. I only found out because one day after school he went to his bedroom as usual, and I took a snack to him, but his door was locked. He never locks his door. He didn’t want to open it at first, but I insisted, and when he let me in, I saw that he’d been crying.”  
    “Crying? Miles?”
    “I almost had a heart attack when I saw the tears on his cheeks, because ... well, I just.. .”Jenna said nothing for a moment. When she’d seen the tears on Miles’s cheeks, panic had exploded inside her, because ever since Josh had died, she’d been living with the palpitating fear that something might happen to her only remaining son. But she said none of that. “It took me a while, but I finally got it out of him. He told me about that bully, and it made me so