3. Olivia
OLIVIA
“Liv…sweetie… my darling, precious baby girl… I know you don’t like to be rushed but we’re getting a little stretched for time before the viewing, and Alexandra’s mother isn’t someone we should keep waiting.” Ivy gives me an apologetic smile from the mortuary doorway.
I sigh, still fiddling with the bobby pins failing to hold the decedent’s hair. “I know. I just can’t get her part to sit right, and before that I wasn’t happy with the reconstruction of the stab wound to her cheek.”
Some clients are more difficult than others.
I’m not sure if today’s issues are due to it being the end of another long week, or if it’s because Alexandra’s mother is a high-profile news anchor—one with an extremely unfavorable demeanor.
If anything goes wrong during the services leading up to her daughter’s funeral, the world will hear about it.
“Give me a few more minutes.” I run my glove-covered hands gently over the back of Alexandra’s head, paranoid the screws holding her skull together weren’t placed as perfectly as they could’ve been. “If you can get Hugo to wheel in the casket, I’ll start placing her right away.”
She nods slowly, her attention remaining on Alexandra.
“Was there something else?” I ask.
“Other than how ridiculously cold it is in here?” She wraps her arms around her waist and shivers. “I don’t know how you handle it in winter.”
“Layers.” She already knows that, though. “What’s really on your mind, Ive?”
She winces, the expression scrunching her beautiful face. “Well… speaking of Hugo…” Her gaze finally meets mine. “You know I’m not one to snitch and all that…”
“But?” I straighten, as if better posture will make whatever mess my least-favorite employee has created become somewhat easier to digest.
Her hands fall to her sides, her eyes blinking back at me with sympathy. “The cremator was warm when I came in this morning.”
What the fuck?
Again?
“He did a pickup last night, didn’t he?” I remember the additional body bag in the cooler when I dragged my half-asleep ass into work earlier but haven’t had time to learn about our latest client.
“Yeah. At around ten. An eighty-year-old woman from Settler’s Nursing Home.”
“Goddamnit.” I yank the face shield off my head.
Her wince deepens. “I’m sorry for telling you. It’s just that?—”
“Don’t be. There’s no way you could’ve kept this to yourself.” I cross the room, dumping the face and mouth shields to the bin. “What did my father say?”
She gives me a funny look. “Carlo has the day off, remember?”
I turn my back to her and grab the counter with both hands, briefly closing my eyes. Shit. I hate how frequent my dad’s casual days have become. I hate even more how I’m now going to have to deal with Hugo when he should’ve been fired the first time he messed with the retort.
“I’ll speak to him.” I paste on a half-hearted smile and turn back to my friend, my braid seeming overwhelmingly tight despite some of the loosened hair tickling my cheeks. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I am worried.” She approaches, her sympathetic expression sinking under my skin. “I know how much you hate this sort of stuff, and if your dad were here I would’ve taken it straight to him. But…”
“But he’s not.” And I’m yet to learn how to explode into a million bats and disappear whenever an unwanted human interaction arises, so… “I need to start learning how to handle management issues. This’ll be good for me.”
She raises a slow brow. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
Me, obviously.
I shake it off. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’d be fine if you didn’t hate socializing… or people in general.”
“I don’t hate those things.” Well, not all the time. Not since one dreamy night six months ago.
Ninety percent of interactions and ninety-nine percent of people—for sure.
Her other brow hikes to meet the raised one. “Really? Tell me the last time you conversed with the living in a pleasurable way, my sweet, hermitted Olivia.”
“I talk to you?—”
“Other than me, your dad, and Allison.”
Okay. Fine. That makes things more difficult. Yet she’s well aware of my one exceptional experience.
I beam a sultry smile. My heart does a little pitty-pat. “That night?—”
“Do not relay the story about you and the guy from the bar. That happened a freaking lifetime ago, Liv.”
My face falls. The game is lost.
It was a good night though.
The only instance I can recall where I didn’t imagine placing a plastic bag over my head and tying it tight around my throat when a random man dared to speak to me.
He’d been smooth, suave, and sinful. And those hands… Not that I have much of a base for comparison, but it was a five-star experience in my book.
Two thumbs up.
Highly recommended.
“Seriously, stop thinking about him.” Ivy claps my shoulder with a chuckle, jolting me from the memories. “You need to get out more.”
“No, thank you. Dealing with Hugo will be enough association with the living to last until the new year.”
“It’s February,” she drawls.
“Exactly.” I tug off my clothes shield, volley it into the trash, then backtrack toward the door. “Do you mind bringing Alexandra’s casket in while I talk to him? And get the cooling pads, too? Pretty please.”
“Sure. I’ll have everything ready for your return from battle.”
“You’re so kind.” I cringe, trying not to imagine how Hugo and I are about to butt heads.
Even though I don’t see him all that much these days due to my workload and the favorable need to lock myself in the mortuary, when our paths do cross it’s never short of discomforting.
How could it not be when I was the one who discovered the warm retort last time? Then proceeded to rat on him to my father.
I was also the one who adamantly argued he should be fired, right in front of his face, when my dad decided to let him off with a warning.
“If I’m not back in ten can you wheel Alexandra back into the cooler?” I pause at the threshold, anticipation wreaking havoc on my stomach.
“Of course.”
“You’re the most awesome person I know.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s not the compliment you think it is when you only know four people.”
“It’s the thought that counts, right?” I close the door behind me and attempt to ignore the dread filling my gut.
It wasn’t easy growing up the only daughter of two proud funeral directors.
The soundtrack to my teenage years was a constant stream of tears and guttural sobs—none of them mine. I’d come home from class to our living space upstairs, and more often than not I’d have to skirt a crowd of mourning families.
Kids at school teased me. Boys didn’t want to date me. And in the few instances when they did, it was due to morbid curiosity not romantic interest.
It was only natural that I tapped the brakes on socializing at an early age. I cut and run from the whole stitch.
The only exceptions to my antisocial rules are my dad, Ivy, Allison, and my sweet elderly neighbor, Lesley.
I don’t even talk to grieving families anymore. That’s my father’s domain, and Ivy steps in like a dutiful protege when he’s not around.
I drag my feet along the hall, the heating from the main part of the two-story funeral home blistering in comparison to my usual space of solitary confinement.
I pass the staff break room and poke my head inside. It’s empty. No sign of the accused.
I continue past the cremation room, then further to the reception area where Allison sits behind her desk, typing into her keyboard, her face partially blocked from view by the large crystal vase beside her filled with white roses and carnations.
“Good morning, Ally.” I force a smile as she glances up from her computer.
“Morning,” she beams, her enthusiastic expression quickly fading. “Are you looking for Hugo?”
“Yeah. I?—”
“Did someone say my name?” The man of the moment walks out from the admin storeroom behind Allison’s desk holding a stack of Alexandra’s service booklets. “Look who crawled out of her dungeon to grace us with her presence.”
Funny joke from someone about to take pole position on the unemployment line, you horse’s ass.
“Morning, Hugo.” I divert my path toward my father’s closed office door. “Can you please follow me?”
He frowns. “Why?”
“There’s something we need to discuss.” I keep walking, not stopping until my fingers grip the door handle. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“No thanks. The last time I was requested in your father’s office I got accused of shit I didn’t do.”
I fight not to react to his unprofessionalism. He shouldn’t curse so loud in case grieving families are on the premises. Not only that, but the so-called shit was true. He confessed. Maybe not to me, but it all came out in the end.
“It’s a private matter.” I force calm and swing my father’s door open.
“I don’t care if it’s private.” Hugo dumps Alexandra’s booklets on Allison’s desk. “You can speak to me out here.”
My cheeks flame hot. “That would be unprofession?—”
“Just spit it out, Olivia. Whatever you want to accuse me of, you can do it in front of an audience.”
Wow. He really is holding a grudge. Two-fisted grip and all.
“Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed?” Allison mutters.
“No,” he snaps. “I just hear her judgment loud and clear when I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. I won’t take that bullshit again.”
I drag in a deep breath, wishing I could crawl back into my death sanctuary where conversations are one-sided and the only people I have to deal with lack a pulse.
“Fine.” I stand my ground, square my shoulders, and hold his gaze. “And I’m glad you brought up last time because what I need to discuss seems to be an extension of the issues that arose back then.”
He chokes on a cough. “I didn’t do anything back then.”
“Come on, man, you admitted it two weeks later at that nightclub.” Allison rolls her eyes. “You told me you used the retort on your Labrador after she passed.”
“It was a joke,” he says. “A drunk one at that. How was I to know you were still holding me accountable for something I didn’t even do?”
He did it.
I know he did.
The retort had been used. And although he’d done a decent job sweeping out the tiny bone fragments after the cremation of his goddamn canine, his standard of cleaning wasn’t as high as mine or my father’s, and we’re the only two allowed to use the equipment.
“You then went on to slur about how you should start a pet cremation side-hustle,” Allison drawls.
“It was a fucking joke,” he repeats.
“I’m not here to rehash the past.” I clasp my hands in front of me, my palms sweating. “What I do want to speak about is why the cremator was warm again this morning.”
“Warm?” He glares. “You’re accusing me of the exact same shit? Really?”
“You did a pickup last night. You were the only one that came into the building after we closed.”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t touch your precious cremator.”
“Hugo, please. I hate this as much as you do?—”
“Hate what? Accusing me of things I haven’t done? I just told you I didn’t go anywhere near the stinking cremation room. I put some old crone from Settler’s on ice, then went the fuck home.”
And that right there is another reason why his disrespectful ass should get the boot.
Ivy told me months ago that he had no empathy for the deceased. It just took me a little longer to notice.
“I wish I could believe you.” I shrug. “But when moments ago you were still denying the whole cremated dog story after you previously admitted to it, there’s no trust here. You?—”
“No trust?” He raises his voice. “Are you firing me?” He shoots a glance to Allison. “This is bullshit. She has no proof.” His furious gaze returns to mine. “Does your dad know you’re doing this?”
God, how I wish my father knew. There’s no way he’d let me suffer through this on my own if he were privy to another Hugo stint. And even though my dad is probably right upstairs watching television or reading the biography of some random sports athlete, I refuse to break the sacred oath not to contact staff on their day off. He deals with enough hours on call and deserves his downtime to be uninterrupted.
“You’re well aware I don’t need Carlo’s permission to handle something like this. Every time you misuse the retort you put our livelihood at risk. We could lose our license. Not to mention how unethical it is.”
If news broke that a local funeral home was cremating pets in the same sacred space as loved ones, we’d be blacklisted.
Closed.
End of story.
“But I didn’t fucking do it.” He thunders toward me, his height seeming so much taller than mine now that he’s enraged. “You can’t fire me on an assumption.”
My pulse increases, my hatred of social interaction skyrocketing to nauseating heights.
“Your past is damning enough at this point.” I sidestep, cautiously walking around him to make my way to the entry. I pull the door wide, the freezing winter air swooping in to swallow me whole. “I suggest you leave quietly so this doesn’t become a legal matter. I’ll pack your things and?—”
“Legal matter?” His face is red now. “It’s currently a fictional matter. I didn’t touch the damn retort when I came in last night. You probably left it on after you fried that junkie with the rich parents.”
“What did you say?” Ivy’s voice carries down the hall, her heels furiously clapping as she approaches along the tile.
Shit.
“Hugo, leave.” I cling to the door handle, wishing I would’ve thought this through before taking action.
“Aaron Jefferson was not a junkie.” Ivy marches into the room, scowl fully engaged. “He was a returned serviceman who was injured fighting for our country. The health system let him down?—”
“Ivy.” I give her a pleading look. “It’s okay. Let me handle this.”
“Yeah, Ivy,” Hugo mocks as he trudges toward me. “Mind your own goddamn business.”
My heart pumps harder. Faster.
He stops before me. My pride has me standing taller when I should probably shrink back.
“You can’t do this.” He gets in my face. “You fucking can’t. I need this job.”
“I’m sorry,” I lie because I don’t have a death wish. “Please, just leave.”
“Or what?” He stares at me. “What are you going to do, Liv?”
I’m more concerned about what he’s going to do. If my cremation-obsessed friend over here will turn violent.
There are no weapons on the premises apart from my surgical supplies in the mortuary.
No monitored alarms to trigger.
Why the hell hasn’t Dad let me bring this building into the twenty-first century?
“I’m not sure what she’ll do.” Ivy snarls. “But if you don’t move out of her personal space I’ll?—”
“Ivy,” I warn.
“I’m calling the cops.” Allison grabs the office phone. “Good luck getting another job after news of this breaks.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
News of this can’t break.
“Everyone needs to calm down.” I raise my palms in placation, glancing from Ivy to Allison then finally, the man of the moment—who seems slightly subdued after the cop threat. “Why don’t we take a step back from all this? Go home, Hugo. Use the weekend to think about what’s happened. If you’re still adamant you did nothing wrong, then come back on Monday and speak to Carlo.”
“After you’ve already cemented my guilt?” he snips.
“I’ll tell him the facts. That’s all. He can come to his own conclusions. Don’t forget he fought for you last time.”
He shakes his head. “You’re ruining my life.”
You’re not filling mine with sunshine and daisies either, asshole.
“Take the weekend,” I repeat. “Nothing good can come from continuing this conversation today.”
He glowers but complies, stalking outside and into the parking lot.
It isn’t until he’s out of view that I close the door and slump back against the cold glass with a relieved sigh.
“You should’ve asked for his keys.” Ivy crosses her arms over her chest. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes back tonight and torches the place.”
I slump farther. “I seriously didn’t think that through.”
Dad is going to kill me.
Iwant to kill me.
I push off the door. “On a positive note, at least I’ll be here if he does return, because the additional workload I’ve just given myself will keep me on the premises until midnight.”