Last Lie by Stephen White Read Free Book Online Page B

associated his parsimony with his father, Peter. But I was concerned that it might simply be a response to all he'd suffered.
    "Not by yourself. I'll be there too, you know," I said. "If you decide to do it." One of my guidelines for myself as a parent was that I always wanted my children to know what options they had and what options they didn't have. My "I'll be there" was my way of making certain that Jonas understood his degrees of freedom in that particular situation. If he chose to spend another night in the house, he would have my company.
    Jonas, I thought, was relieved. I assumed he wouldn't want to let me know that he'd feel safer with me close by.
    "You can sleep in Ma's room," he said. "If I do it."
    Maybe not, I thought. I didn't believe in ghosts, but if I knew anyone who would be eager to haunt me playfully from the afterlife, it would be Jonas's mom, Adrienne.
    "I'll stay out of your way, if that's what you want," I said.
    Jonas's aunt and uncle had recently flown out from New York and offered a big assist in helping to sort everything that had been in the house. Some special items had been crated and stored away for Jonas, a few coveted things were distributed to other family members on both sides of Jonas's family, and the rest was tossed or put up for bid at an auction that I didn't attend. What didn't sell went to charity.
    Jonas was an eleven-year-old kid. Although he was precocious in some ways, he was immature in others. His sense of value, monetary or sentimental, was undeveloped. He had asked for very little from the house. But he had requested his father's tools. Because the barn that had been Peter's shop and studio had been vacated for the new owners, too, the precious stash of professional woodworking paraphernalia now filled a big rented storage locker down on 55th near Arapahoe.
    Jonas had also asked for his mother's music collection, which included a couple of boxes of vintage vinyl that Adrienne had stashed in the cellar--she'd apparently once had a serious disco jones she'd kept completely secret from all of us--and a gazillion CDs. Jonas locked on to what he said was his mom's favorite band, an indie folk group named Girlyman. Their multi-tonal harmonies proved so easy on Lauren's difficult-to-please, MS-irascible ears that we began listening to a lot of Girlyman in our house. Jonas knew all the lyrics and could sing any harmonic line. Gracie started to join him in duets.
    During the first weekend after the autumnal equinox, while we were enjoying a Sunday supper of panko-crusted salmon to the sounds of "Tell Me There's a Reason," Grace asked, "What is a girlyman, anyway?"
    Lauren and I locked eyes--each of us was begging the other to jump in. Jonas saved us. He said, "My mom was a girlyman." I was shocked by Grace's response: she asked him to pass the creamed corn.
    The departed stuff left the big house empty in the way that only well-lived-in houses are ever empty.
    Some furniture--almost all of it, save the upholstered pieces, had been handmade by Jonas's father, Peter--had left literal footprints behind. Indentations in the carpet. Scratches on the hardwood. The fingertips of ten thousand hands had darkened the lacquered or polished wood in those places that humans are drawn to touch by instinct or habit. In the master bath upstairs, I spotted a fossilized mosquito frozen in three dimensions, four if you count time, on the vanity mirror. In the scenario in my head, I guessed that it had been squished by Adrienne's hand only hours before she boarded the airplane flight that would take her to Israel and to her death.
    I found the empty house eerie yet comforting. I could still feel the human energy in the space that had long been occupied by Peter and Adrienne and Jonas, and a seemingly endless parade of nannies. When I walked the house, I could still hear the echoes of Jonas's laughter ringing through all of his earlier developmental phases.
    Jonas's bedroom had been in the middle of the