Thursday Nights with the Millers

Content Warning: This story contains themes of grief, mental health struggles, and references to a deceased body, including scenes involving corpse preservation and delusion. Reader discretion is advised.

The table was set for four with unnerving precision. Only one high-backed chair was occupied. Tall taper candles flickered in antique candelabras at either end, their flames casting spidery shadows across the pristine white linen tablecloth and climbing the walls like skeletal fingers. Wax pooled in the holders. Mira swiftly slid one of the candelabras closer to the center, away from the only chair that was filled.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she murmured, her fingers resting gently on the small swell of her stomach. “I forgot how you dislike the warmth.” Tiny kicks stirred in her belly, as they so often did when she was near Jonah.

She straightened her husband’s silverware again, then circled the table to adjust the gleaming silver settings at each of the three empty, velvet-upholstered chairs. The faint scent of cologne lingered in the cool air, clashing oddly with the herbal burn of the candles. After refolding the expertly crafted napkins, Mira returned to the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of Syrah, setting it opposite the crystal water carafe. She glanced toward her husband, a faint smile touching her lips—Jonah’s favorite wine.

She had always loved Thursday nights, when friends came over for dinner and conversation—before everything changed. The dinners had stopped months ago. Not by choice.

Mira brushed an invisible speck of dust from Jonah’s rigid shoulder and straightened the collar of his freshly ironed shirt, her eyes glinting with pride, like a painter placing the final, careful brushstroke. “You look lovely, honey,” she said softly, unable to tear her eyes from his piercing cerulean gaze. “I’ve always said that shirt brings out your eyes.”

Her fingers twitched at her sides, nails biting into cuticles. Excitement tangled with her nerves. This would be the first dinner party since Jonah got sick. The fact that he would still be with them tonight… it almost brought her to tears.

The doorbell chimed. She straightened the front of her dress, smoothing down her curly dark hair as she scurried to the door. Her smile, though wide, twitched at the edges.

Lena and Tom stood on the doorstep. Lena grinned awkwardly. Tom wore his usual polite, stoic expression. She clutched a bottle of 2007 Barolo, a wine Jonah had once said “remembered things.”

“Hello, hello! It’s so wonderful to see you!” Mira’s greeting was warm, her arms extended in a tight embrace. She held on a beat too long, Lena thought, and felt a subtle fullness between them—softer, lower than she remembered—before they separated.

“Thank you for having us,” Lena said politely, her smile a little too tight. “This is for you.”

Mira accepted the wine gratefully and turned to the tall, red-haired man beside her with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Tom, Jonah is beyond excited to see you. Please, come in.”

She noticed the rise of one of Tom’s sharp eyebrows before the guests followed her into the small living room and toward the dining room. As they approached the archway, Lena’s fingers gripped Tom’s like a vice.

Tom’s breath caught at the sight of the table—and the balding man seated with his back to them, wearing a sky-blue shirt that perfectly matched their host’s ruffled dress. Mira watched Lena’s eyes widen, while Tom’s narrowed. Quick, alarmed glances passed between them.

Mira’s hand slid across Jonah’s shoulder and down his arm, tugging his sleeve to hide a faint purple bruise above his elbow. “Honey, look what Lena and Tom brought!” she gushed, smiling brightly as she swapped the wines. She smoothed his sleeve again.

“He’s just a bit tired today,” she confessed, voice bright but brittle. “But it means the world to him that you’re here.” She pulled out the two chairs opposite her husband, her hand resting on the back of one as she watched her friends expectantly.

Lena walked slowly to the table, her eyes locked on the chair Mira offered. She avoided looking at the man who sat unnaturally straight-backed, one hand resting perfectly still on the table. Tom stared at his wife as she sat, his lips a thin white line, his feet still planted firmly in the center of the archway.

Tom watched Mira’s smile falter as Lena’s panicked eyes widened. She jerked her head toward the empty chair beside her, a silent plea for her husband to sit. Reluctantly, he obliged. Mira pretended not to notice Tom stare directly into her husband’s eyes, both men completely still except for a muscle twitching at Tom’s temple.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Mira said to the table, the same placid smile glued to her cheeks. “I made—"

“What is this?” Tom’s voice was tight and sharp.

Lena’s head whipped toward her husband in a whirl of blonde hair. Her eyebrows disappeared into the thin bangs framing her forehead. Her mouth parted slightly in shock.

Mira fought the muscles of her face, forcing her smile to remain even as her eyes burned. “What do you mean?”

Tom’s face reddened. Lena shot him a pleading shake of the head. Mira observed them both.

“You know what I mean,” Tom’s fist clenched on the table, his knuckles white against the tablecloth. Mira looked from his face to his hand, to Lena’s petrified expression as she whispered, “Please.”

Nobody said a word as Mira poured the wine—Jonah’s glass first, then Lena’s and Tom’s. She filled her own glass with water and sipped slowly, then turned to face Tom.

“You didn’t come to the hospital.” Her voice was soft, but it cut through the silence like a shard of glass. “He waited for you,” she said, eyes darting to her fingers fidgeting in her lap. She forced them still and met Tom’s hazel stare—sharp and full of ice. “He thought for sure you’d come. That you wouldn’t let him go without saying goodbye.”

A timer clattered in the kitchen. Mira brightened. “Excuse me just a moment, please.”

Even from the kitchen, she heard their whispers. She sensed their eyes searing through the wall, felt them burning on her skin when she returned, bearing trays of steaming food. She set them down with care. Lena cleared her throat as Mira lowered herself into her seat.

“This looks amazing,” Lena said, an excruciating smile plastered on her face like it pained her. “It smells wonderful.”

Mira grinned broadly, piling roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, and lamb onto the plates. “Jonah always loved when I made lamb,” she said, placing three chops before her husband. “It’s been making me nauseous lately, though.”

Lena bit back a gasp. She took a polite bite of her potatoes, smiling and nodding at Mira, who noted the glaze of fear in her friend’s big brown eyes. Fear, pity—perhaps even guilt.

“I can see why,” Lena said. “You’re a very good cook.”

Mira beamed. Tom seethed.

“This is sick,” he hissed. “What the hell did you do to him? Did you… preserve him? Like some kind of hunting trophy?”

Lena’s sharp gasp was the only sound as Mira stilled. Her grip tightened on her fork; her eyes, hollow and unblinking, fixed on the tablecloth. Lena kicked Tom under the table, stammering as she tried to apologize for her husband’s rudeness. Her words sputtered and failed.

Mira lifted her stoic, unblinking gaze to Tom, her voice flat and haunting. “When someone disappears, it is crueler to pretend they were never here. To continue on without them as if they were never needed.” Mira spoke with the calm certainty of naming the day of the week. “You sent flowers, but you didn’t come. He remembered that.”

Her eyes clamped shut for just a moment at the thought of that sterile, white hallway. The memory of walking back into his hospital room to find it cold and empty, the feeling of her screams catching in her throat when the doctor told her the surgery had failed.

Tom watched Mira gather herself and cast a long, loving look at her husband’s body as she gently swatted away a fly that hovered by his ear. His hand—once flat on the table—now lightly curled, as if wrapped around an invisible glass.

Lena sat frozen, fork suspended above her plate. She looked at her husband, silently pleading.

Tom placed his hands on the table and pushed his chair back, standing swiftly. “This is just wrong. I can’t do this.”

As he stepped around the table, Mira rose. She crossed the sitting room and turned the lock on the front door with a sharp click. Tom stood frozen beside his seat. Lena tugged gently at his sleeve, urging him to sit.

Calm as ever, Mira returned to the dining room and resumed her place. Lena pulled Tom back into his chair, his eyes full of daggers.

“He never wanted a funeral,” Mira said, drawing slow circles on the back of Jonah’s greying hand. She swore she felt a slight twitch beneath her touch. “He always said they were for other people. All he ever wanted was not to be alone.”

Tom shook his head slowly, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. Instead, he studied the corpse of his best friend: the clumps missing from thinning hair, the little purple spots blooming beneath the shirt, the way the head now sagged slightly forward. He tried not to wonder what Mira had done, how she learned to preserve a body like this—or why.

Then Mira stood again, that unsettling smile back on her lips. “I hope you both like pineapple upside-down cake.”

Plates and silverware clattered as Mira cleared the table, mostly untouched. She bustled into the kitchen and returned with the cake, the scent of caramelized sugar and fruit drifting over the stoic room. Beneath it, Tom still caught a hint of Jonah’s cologne—the one he’d worn since college.

Mira slid the cake to the center of the table. Its glistening top shimmered in the candlelight as she began slicing thick wedges.

“Jonah’s mother used to make this cake for his birthday,” she said, her voice coated in syrupy nostalgia. “He loved flipping it upside down—said it made it even better.”

“That is lovely,” Lena said, shifting politely as she accepted her slice and picked at it with her fork.

Mira tried to hand a plate to Tom. He only stared at her, his hands braced on the table as if ready to push off again. Without comment, Mira set the plate in front of Tom and quietly served Jonah. She refilled her water and offered wine. Lena shook her head gently, eyes frozen wide above a tight-lipped smile.

Tom still just stared.

Mira swirled her glass contemplatively, as if it held the wine no one was drinking. A dreamy smile played on her lips as she took in her husband. Still here. Still with her. Just like before.

The silence thickened. The stares sharpened.

Then Mira spoke. Her voice was deeper now, laced with anger.

“I was there. Every day. Every night. Until they took him into that operating room. Neither of you were ever there.” Her head snapped to Lena, who inhaled sharply—then burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” Lena sobbed, shaking her head. “Mira, I’m so, so sorry—"

Tom slammed a fist on the table.

“Enough, Mira,” he snarled. “This isn’t normal. This is not right, and—"

“And what?” Mira was shaking now. Her voice rose as she stared at Tom. “And it’s right to abandon your best friend in his hour of need? To never once visit him? To leave his wife alone—to raise his child with only silence?”

She whirled toward Lena, whose cheeks were soaked with the tears that still streamed silently from her glossy red eyes. “And after months of silence, you sit here and judge me for doing what I had to—to save my husband, to save my family, when I didn’t have a choice?”

Lena’s tears froze. Tom uncurled his fist.

“His… his baby?” His voice barely registered.

Mira nodded. Her eyes burned—whether with grief or fury, she couldn’t tell. She kept her voice even.

“Yes. Jonah and I are expecting.” She placed a hand on her stomach, a strained smile pulling at her lips as she tucked a thin lock of hair behind Jonah’s ear. A small kick knocked against her ribs.

“We’re secretly hoping for a boy,” Mira added, voice light and optimistic. “A little mini-Jonah. He’s always been so excited to be a boy dad.”

Tom’s eyes flicked to her stomach, then to Jonah. The math hit him like a punch. She hadn’t known then—there was no way she could have. His hand trembled as he picked up his glass and drank deeply. Lena followed, taking a slow, deliberate sip.

Without so much as a glance at one another, the couple picked up their forks and dug into the cold pineapple cake. Not a word was spoken as Tom and the two women ate, while a fourth plate sat untouched before Jonah’s corpse.

Mira glimpsed a patch of purple peeking out of his collar and leaned over, gently covering it with his shirt. The candles flickered low in their holders, the gentle clink of silverware the only sound in the room filled with thick, suffocating air.

***

Three weeks later, Mira opened a window to let in the sharp winter air. She set brightly polished silverware around the table, where eight chairs had been arranged at even intervals.

“Shannon and Matthew will be joining us tonight,” she chirped to Jonah, fussing with the buttoned cuffs of his sleeves. She drew a small comb from his breast pocket and gently swept a clump of hair over a spot above his ear. “They finally found a sitter. Shannon said Matthew’s been looking forward to seeing you all week.”

When the doorbell rang, Mira rushed to open it.

“Thank you for having us!” Lena said brightly, folding Mira into a tight hug that lingered. Her smile widened as she took in the sight of her friend—the small bump visible beneath her blouse.

Tom flashed a grin, handing a dark bottle of wine to Mira. “It’s great to see you,” he said as she ushered them inside. “Are we the first to arrive?”

Mira took their coats and hung them by door. “Yes, but everyone else should be here shortly,” she said, glancing toward the sitting room at the grandfather clock tucked in the corner. “Jonah is already at the table.”

“Wonderful!” Lena hooked her arm through Tom’s, and they walked into the dining room, taking their usual seats.

“Hey, Jonah!” Lena said as she lowered herself onto the familiar dark velvet. Tom clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Looking good, man.”

The group made small talk as more guests trickled in, until every chair and every wineglass were filled. The room quieted as Tom raised his glass.

“To friends,” he said solemnly. “Friends who support one another like family, who are always there to help, or to simply be. Like Mira and Jonah.”

Mira looked up at Tom, a true smile curling her lips, emotion shining in her eyes.

“He has always been there,” she added, a tear rolling down her cheek as she took Jonah’s hand in hers. “I still talk to him every day. He listens better now.”

A light chuckle echoed around the table.

Tom met Mira’s gaze, then let his eyes drift to the sagging corpse of his best friend. The mold crept higher now—blooming up his neck, curling beneath his ears, inching toward his sunken glass eyes.

“To Mira, and the beautiful baby she is growing,” Tom continued, “And to Jonah. For always being here.”