Chasing the Dead
Chapter One
December 21
Present Day
6:18 P.M.
Stuck in week-before-Christmas traffic north of Boston, Sue Young is scanning the radio dial, searching for a weather report, when a song comes on from the summer of 1983, Duran Duran doing “Rio,” and oh boy, does it take her back. Without wanting to, she thinks of Phillip, something he’d said to her once: The past is never done with us in any substantial way. The most cursory exami-nation reveals its bloody fingerprints on every surface of our lives.
It’s Phillip in a nutshell, an appetizer of eloquent wisdom with a nice fluffy side salad of pomposity. In the beginning, back when they were kids, she’d only heard the wisdom. Later, after they got married, only the pomposity. Now that he’s gone Sue hears a dollop of both but mainly she just hears him, his voice in her head, and despite everything he’s done to her, she even misses it from time to time.
The song on the radio keeps playing. Sue realizes she’s stiffened instinctively against the nice leather upholstery that Phillip paid extra to have installed in the Expedition, not enjoying the crawling ... read full excerpt from Chasing the Dead ebook
