Free What the Dead Want by Norah Olson

porch, near Esther.
    â€œIt’s pretty as hell here sometimes,” Esther said. “That’s another reason our family has stayed so long.”
    The throbbing hum of insects was like a tonic. Moths and long-legged bugs fluttered around the porch light. She sat with her aunt watching the sky get darker.
    Esther had brought her here to see something, to understand something. If her mother was alive, she would want Gretchen there too, where it was so easy to believe in spirits. She would want her to have made this pilgrimage, to see with her own eyes the brutal and benevolent place where her life began.
    Suddenly Gretchen was filled with the anger and confusion she’d felt as a younger girl, angry at falling into a sentimental thought about Mona. All the things she tried to ignore came rushing back here in her mother’s family home. Who cared if Mona would have wanted her there? Mona who couldn’t even say good-bye, who had been so sweet and loving one day and then gone the next, leaving her father to pick up the pieces, leaving Gretchen to wonder for years what she could have done that would have made her mother stay.
    Those old feelings of doubt had tortured her for solong, and now they were back. But maybe this time she could get some answers. Not for Mona’s sake, but for her own. She looked up at her aunt. She had a feeling Esther might understand what it was like to be angry about something you had no power to change.

    Dear James,
    Three more fires last week. People were running from their homes to see, as if it were a party, the sounds of hooves beating the road—an enormous blaze. All was chaos. The more talk of war and discontent, the more anxious and violent people seem to become.
    I ran outside and was astonished to see so many simply standing and looking on as our neighbor’s yard caught light from the torches that had been thrown there. I was running back to my parents’ house when I saw George.
    I told him I couldn’t believe we had people like this living in our midst. And he comforted me. He said not to worry, we’d rout them all out. I went home and listened to my parents up talking in the parlor. Their anxiety was clear in their hushed voices. Especially my mother. When I looked around the corner at them, she was standing in front of the mirror nervously pinning her hair up and crying.
    But by the next day the whole town was silent again, which seemed even stranger. One of the houses had burned; the other two had visible damage, just one family, going about moving the charred wood from the torches out of their front yard.
    We think we are so civilized. But what’s the price we pay for our quiet lives?
    If either of our families knew what we were doing, James, they would be shocked, and even if they’d felt the same things themselves, they would tell us to stop.
    With all of this happening I feel claustrophobic. I feel an even greater hunger for meaning and learning. I have your brave example to thank, as you are the only person I know who has ever left Mayville.
    Sincerely,
    Fidelia

TEN
    T HEY STAYED OUT ON THE PORCH FOR A LONG TIME, talking about her mother and travel and vintage clothing shops.
    â€œI know you’re pissed,” Esther said. “I know it. I can see it. Hell, even I’m pissed and worried, I know it’s nothing like what you’re going through. . . . But listen, sweets. You got so much from your mom. Mona was a curious girl like you. And I bet you can remember a lot of other good things if you let yourself.”
    â€œMona,” Gretchen said, her mother’s name like a laugh or a sob caught in her throat. “She was so tough but so sweet, you know?”
    Esther nodded. “I do know. She could get completely absorbed in what she was doing and just go off on her own. This last time she came to visit, she didn’t even say good-bye.”
    Gretchen winced. No one had gotten a good-bye. And she was done