Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira Read Free Book Online

anyone since I’ve known her until last year, when she fell for this guy who was walking across the country for Jesus. She found out about him on the news, and she decided she really admired this man. She sent him letters and care packages to pit stops along his route. And then she decided to fly out to Florida so she could join the end of his pilgrimage. She walked the last one hundred miles with him, and they struck up a romance on the road. I think Aunt Amy imagined she’d finally found her mate. Afterward, she called him a lot and left him messages, where she did impressions of Mister Ed or of the Jamaican bobsledders from the movie Cool Runnings . (That is her next favorite thing after Mister Ed.) At first, he called back a little bit. She’d ask him when she could see him again, but he’d never say exactly when. And soon the calls stopped coming. She’s always checking the answering machine, though she tries to act like she doesn’t care. I think she doesn’t want me to see her being hopeful. (I don’t know if being super into Jesus makes you against things like modern technology, but Aunt Amy still hasn’t figured out cell phones.)
    At the beginning of the summer, after Mom had told me she was going to go to California for a while, she decided she needed to call some kind of family meeting. It was there that Aunt Amy asked if I wanted to spend Mom’s weeks with her. Clearly the two of them had planned this. Mom and Dad and Aunt Amy and I were sitting in the house May and I grew up in, on the sofa that had been worn in by years of our bodies. Aunt Amy turned to me and asked, “What do you think, Laurel?” She looked so hopeful about it.
    Dad didn’t look so sure, but I knew that if I said no to Aunt Amy, she would start talking about how they let May go too far down a path of sin and how I needed God or something.
    I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    Then Aunt Amy pointed out that if I stayed with her, I could go to the high school in her district. I had barely considered the fact that I’d have to go to high school at the end of the summer, but if I did have to go, it seemed like a good idea to go somewhere else. So I agreed.
    Now Aunt Amy hardly wants me to do anything. Go out, or see anyone, or talk to boys, or anything. The only thing she really lets me do is go on “study dates,” which is how I get to hang out with Natalie and Hannah when I’m at her house. Tonight Aunt Amy and I went to dinner at Furr’s Cafeteria, like we’ve done ever since May and I were kids. I got what I always get at Furr’s—Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes with no gravy, and red Jell-O. Aunt Amy always makes the two of us pray before dinner, even when it’s only an iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich and I’m watching TV, and even though my dad and I never pray at our real house. Now the prayer is always for May.
    Afterward, Aunt Amy asks if I have been saved or not and if I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart. And I always say yes, because I want to get it over with. And I don’t want her to worry. May used to say no. Then she would ask, “What about a baby? What if a baby was just born, and didn’t have time yet to accept Jesus, and the baby died? Would they still go to hell? Or what about a grown-up person, who wasn’t a bad person, but just didn’t know about Jesus because he never learned? Would they go to hell?” Aunt Amy never really answered. She’d just get sad and say that she wanted us to know Jesus’ love. She’d say see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. She’d try to make it like a game, with us covering our eyes and ears and mouths. May hated that. Now Aunt Amy is scared, I guess, that May never got saved. She wants to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. But she doesn’t know how guilty I am. I can’t ever tell.
    We were sitting in the Furr’s dining room in the dark red vinyl booth under the ceiling that is too high even for a high ceiling, and I was on to the red Jell-O, cutting