Free The Loveliest Dead by Ray Garton Page B

pressed in on him like a force.  
    A couple more notes tinkled out of the teddy bear.
    David turned and hurried up the stairs, relieved to step into the light and relative warmth of the laundry room. Before closing the door, he looked down into the basement one more time. A shudder passed through him that he did not understand. He told himself that Jenna’s fantasy that Josh had appeared to her in the basement the night before had gotten under his skin. That was all.  
    He was closing the basement door when he noticed an old surface bolt-lock on both the inside and outside, each about a foot above the doorknob. David slid the inside bolt back and forth in its track and was surprised by the smooth movement. He frowned at the locks, wondered why anyone would need to lock the basement door on either side.  
    David closed the door and left the laundry room. It was time to get to work on the garage.
     
    Half an hour later, Jenna told David she had to do some grocery shopping, put on her coat, and left the house. The truth was, she simply wanted to be alone.
    Her mind had been racing ever since she’d seen the teddy bear in the basement. It was the same teddy bear she had seen the hooded toddler— stop thinking of him that way , she thought. Admit it, you think it’s Josh — carrying in the basement the night before, and it had played the same music she’d heard twice and traced to the basement. Jenna was unable to rid herself of the nagging certainty that it was all somehow significant, but it was a significance she did not yet understand. That was why she wanted to be alone—to think.  
    David had been right, of course. Everything he’d said had made perfect sense. They were both thinking of Josh more than usual because they had moved to a new town, but their family was not intact. But even though she knew David had been right, she could not accept that she’d been wrong. No matter how reasonable David’s argument, it did not explain away what she had seen. The teddy bear in the basement made her feel certain she’d seen something . But she still did not understand it.  
    Jenna pulled into the parking lot of the supermarket and parked the Toyota. She hadn’t written up a shopping list, but could think of a few things she needed to pick up. Grocery shopping relaxed her, and she needed to do something that would make her feel normal, because she did not feel that way right now. She had not felt normal since seeing that small figure standing at the end of the upstairs hallway.  
    She pulled a shopping cart from the train of carts outside the store, wheeled it through the automatic doors, and began roaming the aisles. Her eyes scanned the shelves, but her mind was back in the dark, damp basement of their new house.  
    If the small figure she had seen—first in the upstairs hallway, then in the basement—was Josh, why had he been carrying a teddy bear that was packed away with all the other junk down in the basement? It had been the same one, she had no doubt of that—the only difference was that the one Josh had carried had been like new, with shining black eyes, clean fur, and a bright blue ribbon around its neck. The one David had found—the very same teddy bear—was old, falling apart, missing an eye, and filthy.  
    Jenna stopped in front of a bank of shelves that held jars of pickles and scanned them slowly. She knew they were out of bread-and-butter pickles for sandwiches, and she thought vaguely that it might be nice to have a jar of dill pickles in the fridge as well. She took a large jar off a shelf, cradled it in her arm, and examined the label without focusing on it.  
    When she’d told David that Josh had come down to the basement because he liked the teddy bear, she’d been spouting the first explanation that had entered her mind. But it made perfect sense.  
    Jenna had held on to Josh’s toys and clothes for those first few months after his death. She could not bear the thought of getting