“I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“If you teach me how to do it,” I suggest, “then maybe I won’t even have to bother you.”
He glances at me. I watch his hands flying over the keyboard, and then I hear the ding on my iPad that lets me know the file has been sent back to me.“Prego,”he says flatly.You’re welcome.
Joe, who is cataloging his flints, catches my eye and shrugs.
Suddenly the air changes in the room. Wyatt stalks into the communal work area with his cellphone pressed to his ear. “I don’t give a damn,” he fumes. “If you want the paperwork, then you have toprovidethe paperwork—”
He streaks out the doors onto the porch and the doors close behind him.
I walk to the window, watching Wyatt pace and rant on the porch. It strikes me how lucky we had it, fifteen years ago—to be Dumphries’s pawns, instead of theMudir,the director in charge of everything. It makes me wonder: while we were trapped in our own story, what was the one Dumphries was living? Did he know, then, that he was sick? That he was racing against time to publish his work before he stepped down from his post at Yale?
Wyatt looks regal and demanding, the sun anointing him, frustration billowing out behind him like royal robes. He jams the phone back into his pocket and braces his arms on the stone balcony. For a moment, he bows his head.
I am filled with the overwhelming desire to step out there, touch his arm, rub his shoulders. To take some of the responsibility away just long enough for him to breathe again.
I tell myself that it’s because of what I do for a living—I’m used to helping people. Wyatt does not need my support; it’s the other way around.
But when he turns, his eyes find mine through the window with unerring accuracy, as if he knows I’ve been there all along.
—
AFTER THE SUNsets, Wyatt brings a bottle of cognac up to the roof and holds a meeting, explaining to his team how the excavation will be done, step by step. Wyatt, of course, will be the first one inside. Joe is in charge of making sure the generator is working—since it will be dark in the burial chamber, we need portable electricity for lighting. Alberto will be on hand to photograph everything in situ, before it is removed. “Dawn,” he says, “you’ll be with me.” Before Alberto can open his mouth to complain, he adds, “She’s smaller than the rest of us, and given how tiny the chamber seems to be, she may very well be the only one who can maneuver around the coffin.”
No one is brave enough to contradict him.
Alberto gets up and lights a cigarette, then tosses the match off the roof.
“My mother used to say you should never light three cigarettes off one match,” I murmur.
Wyatt turns to me. “Another superstition?”
“No, actually. It came from her dad, who was in the war—if you kept a match lit that long the enemy would see the flame and shoot you.”
Wyatt refills his glass. “Here’s to the knowledge that keeps us alive.”
I shake my head. “If being a death doula has taught me anything, it’s that we know nothing about life. At least not till it’s too late.”
“Evidence,” Wyatt barks.
“Well, you have to be near death to understand why life matters,” I say slowly. “Otherwise, you don’t have the perspective. You believe you have the time to put off that phone call you haven’t made to your mother. You let an old argument fester. You fold down the page in a travel magazine and tell yourself one day, you’ll get to Istanbul or Santorini or back to the town where you were born. You have the luxury of time, until you don’t—and then it becomes clear what’s most important.”
An awkward quiet settles. “Wow,” Joe says after a moment. “You must be a real hit at cocktail parties.”
I look at him. “What keeps you up at night?”
Joe frowns. “Climate change?”
“Something more personal,” I ask.
“I’m a pretty chill guy—”
“You rub the lamp and the genie says,I’ll answer one mystery for you and only one mystery. What is it?”
“Why did my dad leave?” Joe blurts out.
“You’re not going to know that on your deathbed,” I say gently. “Not unless you use your life to figure it out.”
