“Yeah,” Alberto replies. “You could say that.”
I gesture to the door, rolling my eyes so that he’ll close it, and then hop up and throw on my clothing from last night. I’m still tying off the bottom of my braid when I burst into the kitchen area, determined to make sure that Wyatt doesn’t take the fall for something I asked him to do.
Sitting at the kitchen table is a woman with raven-black hair piled onto her head, wearing a light linen shirt and the kind of torn jeans that are so artfully ripped you know they cost hundreds of dollars to look ragged. She is facing Wyatt, and they both hold cups of tea.
“Is he gone already?” I ask breathlessly.
The woman turns. She wears crimson lipstick and has amber eyes and perfect posture and is quite possibly the most beautiful human being I’ve ever seen. Wyatt, on the other hand, has gone bright red, and is pulling at his collar, which is already unbuttoned. “Anya,” he introduces, “this is Dawn. She’s working under me.”
I hear a snort, and realize Alberto is standing behind me.
Wyatt pushes up from the table. “Dawn, this is Anya Dailey. She’s footing the bill for the expedition. She came to see the coffin.”
Anya rises and slides her arm into Wyatt’s. “Among other things,” she says, smiling.
I look down at her hand, resting in the crook of his elbow. At the vintage diamond solitaire on her finger, put there by the fiancé who leads her past me and out of the room.
ABIGAILBEAUREGARDTREMBLEYgot interested in the business of death when she was visiting Indonesia the summer of her college sophomore year and ran out of money. She was hired, by the hour, to cry at funerals. On those days she would put on the only black dress in her suitcase and walk through the streets behind a funeral procession, wailing and weeping with a throng of others. “It didn’t feel dishonest,” she told me years later, when we both were hospice social workers. “For some religions, the louder your funeral is, the easier it is to get to the afterlife. Some people just have fewer mourners. Some people outlive their friends or family. Shouldn’t they get to have a good send-off, too?”
Abigail had been working at the hospice when my mother died. I became a social worker because of her. There was no one I trusted more when I had a professional question, or needed to process a client’s death. Today, when she comes into Perkatory—the coffee shop where we try to meet at least once a month just to catch up—Iam already on my second pour-over and a slice of banana bread. “I know, I know…I’m late,” she says, sliding into a chair across from me and dumping her giant purse on the ground. “Professional hazard.”
I laugh. “Did you order yet?”
“Girl, I called my soy chai latte in from the road.” As if she has channeled it, the barista sets it down in front of her. “It’ll do, but what I really need is straight vodka.”
“I’ve had a few of those days myself.”
“Yeah, I heard you were with Thalia when she died. Sweet lady.”
“She was,” I agree, and we both sit in the memory for a moment. “So what’s making you wish you were drinking?”
“I have a patient whose wife couldn’t handle his death.”
“Sudden diagnosis?”
“No, believe it or not. ALS. It’s been a long time coming; reality just sort of hit her like a ton of bricks. I am not exaggerating when I say that I’ve spent more time preparing her for the inevitable than I have him. Today I go for my visit and I find them curled up together on the bed, OD’d with morphine. She dosed him and then dosed herself. Goddamn Nicholas Sparks and his goddamnedNotebook.” Abigail sighs. “Here’s the kicker.Shedied.Hedidn’t. So now I have an ALS patient with no caregiver.”
“That’s terrible.”
“I know.” She looks at me over the lip of her mug. “So. What did you call the emergency powwow for?”
“I have a client who wants to make a deathbed confession.”
“Okay,” Abigail says.
“It’s one that could hurt people who are left behind.” When I have a confession like Win’s, which could rock the world of someone else in her orbit, I think hard about what should be revealed, what my responsibility is.
“I once had a thirty-eight-year-old patient tell me that he had killed his best friend,” Abigail says. “It had happened twenty-five years earlier. His friend had been drunk, on a bridge, when he slipped and fell. He thought his buddy would swim, so he didn’t jump in after him—but actually the kid had hit his head on the beam as he fell, and he drowned. My patient never told anyone, because he was afraid he’d get in trouble for underage drinking.”
“What did you do?”
“After my patient died, I traced down the kid’s family and I told them the truth. I had to, so that I could sleep at night.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” I tell her. “Sleeping at night.”
“Is your client a serial killer or something?”
“No. Nothing illegal.” I look up at Abigail. “She wants me to do something for her. Something that might hurt her husband pretty badly after she’s gone.”
