The Loveliest Dead Read Free Page B

sound?”
    Martha nodded. “Good. That sounds good.”
    Jenna stepped back and watched Martha get up and shuffle out of the kitchen with her cane. When she heard the bedroom door close down the hall from the kitchen, Jenna sat down in Martha’s place at the table for a moment and stared out the window.  
    Martha’s stroke had frightened Jenna. She had not been ready for another death so soon after Josh’s. She knew she would never be ready for the death of her mother. They had always been close. But as much as it hurt her to think it, she would prefer a quick death for Martha to the slow, lingering fate of something like Alzheimer’s disease. She wondered if that possibly could be the cause of such a hallucination.  
    Before the move, Martha’s doctor in Redding, Dr. Evan Reasor, had recommended a doctor in Eureka, Dr. Blanche Wenders. He had written a letter of referral for Martha and sent it along with her medical records. Jenna decided to call Dr. Wenders’s office that day and make an appointment. She thought Dr. Wenders should be told about Martha’s hallucination.  
    As “Take the ‘A’ Train” began to play on the radio, Jenna went back to her painting.
     
    Jenna was lying naked in bed, reading a paperback novel, when David came into the bedroom in his robe and slippers. He shed the gray robe and tossed it onto the foot of the bed, kicked off the slippers, and slid naked beneath the covers. He propped himself up on his side, facing her, and put a hand on her belly.  
    After two children, Jenna’s belly wasn’t as flat as it used to be. But aside from the fleshy pouch over her abdomen, she had managed to keep her figure mostly intact. Her curves were perhaps a little curvier than they used to be, but that was all. It helped to have good genes—at sixty-nine, her mother was still a slender woman.  
    Jenna closed the book and put it on the bedstand, then turned out the lamp, leaving the room dark. Turning to David, she brushed her hair back from her face— she had just brushed it and it was soft and feathery—and kissed him on the mouth. He tasted of toothpaste and Listerine.  
    “Hey, you did a terrific job in the kitchen today,” David said as he lay back on the bed. “It looks great.”
    “Thank you, sir.” Jenna nestled against him, stretched a long leg over both of his, and put a hand on his chest. He was tall and strong, fit except for a paunch he’d developed from eating Martha’s baking. Jenna felt safe in the crook of his strong arm.  
    “Now, how about doing the outside of the house?”
    She laughed and tweaked his nipple, then rubbed her fingers through the thin tuft of hair on his chest. “Very funny. You know, we really need to do something about the light out in the hall. It’s way too dark out there.”  
    “I know. Just add it to the long list of things we need to do.”
    “Is Miles settled?”
    “He’s already asleep. I think watching that monster movie on TV tonight excited him so much, it wore him out.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t let him watch movies like that.”
    “Oh, c’mon. I watched them when I was his age, and I turned out okay.”
    “Oh, you think so?”
    “They scared the hell out of me back then, but that was what made them fun. I think Grandma even enjoyed it.”
    “Well, nobody ever accused Mom of having good taste.”
    They leaned close and spoke just above a whisper. Their apartment back in Redding had been so small, the only time they had any privacy together was when they were in bed, and it was then that they whispered about their day and whatever was on their minds. They had plenty of opportunities to talk alone now that they were in a large house, but they had not been there long enough to break the old habit.  
    “Speaking of Mom,” Jenna said. She told David about Martha’s hallucination that morning. “I called Dr. Wenders’s office today and made an appointment. If it hadn’t been for that letter of referral Dr. Reasor sent, we