Year After Henry Read Online Free Page A

bedside light until dawn pushed its way in through the window blinds. A damned year, and still there was anger in her heart, mixed in with the pain of loss.
    â€œMom?” Chad’s voice from the kitchen, followed by the quick slam of a screen door. That boy could enter a room faster than any human should be capable of doing. Jeanie was always telling him to slow down, to take it easy, to chill, as the kids said. Truth is, she saw in her son the same nervous energy that had punctuated his father’s life. She had often told Henry that stress was his enemy, especially when it came hand in hand with his eating habits. But Henry didn’t listen. He loved those steaks on the barbecue grill every Sunday, those beers at Murphy’s Tavern, those big plates of nachos with every ball game he watched. He loved betting fifty bucks on a Red Sox game and then jumping from his chair and shouting over every home run, every strike out, every base walked on balls. Life’s too short to worry about stress and cholesterol, Jeanie , he used to tell her. She wondered if Henry changed his mind in those last seconds. Would he have traded the nachos for a few more years?
    â€œI’m in here, son,” Jeanie said. Chad was standing in the bedroom doorway before she had time to add, “Don’t forget to wipe your feet.” He was already Henry’s height, six feet tall and still growing. He looked at the orange wool bonnet.
    â€œWhere’d you find it?” he asked.
    â€œIn the closet,” said Jeanie. She offered it to him. “You want it, Chad?”
    He took it from her and looked down at it for a few seconds. Then he did what Jeanie had already done. He lifted it up to his nose and smelled the life still in it.
    â€œYeah, sure, why not?” he said.
    He was gone before Jeanie could offer anything else, perhaps a few words of consolation. She wanted to touch his arm, maybe whisper to him, “It’s okay, son. I know. I did it too. You can smell him there, can’t you? It’s okay to hurt, Chad. It’s okay to ache like there’s no tomorrow.” It had been a long year and yet the boy still wasn’t letting his mother be privy to his grief. Jeanie heard the roar of Chad’s motorbike in the driveway. It had been Henry’s old bike that he had refurbished a few weeks before he died, a new paint job, a new motor, all as a reward for Chad’s finally getting his math grade up to a B. Jeanie hadn’t approved of this. The way she saw it, Chad should get good grades because it was the thing to do, a move toward his future. She looked out the window in time to see her son pull out of the drive on his bike. Despite what was already turning into a hot day, Chad was wearing his father’s orange bonnet.
    ...
    Frances Munroe was incapable of visiting without bringing some kind of food, mostly in the shape of casserole dishes, tuna and noodles, or a three-bean salad. Because of this, Jeanie had nicknamed her “The Welcome Wagon” and “Meals on Wheels.” In those first years of marriage, it had bothered her that Henry’s mother seemed to think the only way she could visit her son’s house was with food as an offering. But later, when Jeanie started working part-time at Fillmore’s Drugstore, she had come to appreciate the warm casseroles, and the meringue pies, and the rice and vegetable soups. There had even been times when Jeanie had invited Frances over for a cup of coffee, knowing she’d bring the pastries to go with it. This meant that Jeanie wouldn’t have to worry about what dessert to make for Henry’s supper. If the Munroe men came from a long line of postal carriers, the maternal side of the family came from a long line of women who considered food a social tool.
    â€œIt’s raisin squares,” said Frances, as Jeanie opened the front door and accepted the silver baking pan from her mother-in-law. “Only I used