Chapter 4 #2
go like you live here, but this is my house, and my wife isn’t well. She won’t be jogging today, and she doesn’t need coffee, so you don’t need to be here.”
Dell blinked at how he was treating them. She knew he wasn’t the fondest of them, but she wondered if he always spoke to them in such a manner in her absence.
Jason folded his own arms over his chest, though it didn’t have quite the same effect with him being tall but of a slight,
willowy build. “Last I checked, this is Dell’s house, and she’s not your wife yet.”
A dark laugh popped from Tommy’s lips. He shook his head. “I asked nicely, but you’re giving me no choice.” He marched across
the living room to the entryway and yanked open the front door. “Get. Out.”
Dell startled at the sight of a tall man with disheveled dark hair standing in the doorway. He wore a button-down with rolled
sleeves and a crooked tie and had a concerned look on his face. A satchel hung from his shoulder, and he held a book in his
hand.
Tommy didn’t react to him standing there, and when the man’s eyes shot straight to Dell barefoot in her nightgown, instead
of the urge to cover herself up in front of a stranger, she felt a rush of hope.
“Can you see me?” she called to him, and marched toward the door.
A flush filled his face. She noted as his ears turned pink that he was rather handsome. A strong jaw, sharp nose, and dark
eyes. He was easily as tall as Jason, if not taller, and wore his pants cuffed at the ankles and suede oxfords with argyle
socks peeking out.
He glanced at his book and cleared his throat. “Um, yes. Good morning, Ms. Rodgers. I’m Cole Lewis with the After—”
“What’s going on? Why can’t anyone see or hear me? Who are you?” she demanded as she reached for his arm and yanked him inside. Her hand didn’t pass through him but instead landed on the sturdy girth of his forearm. He felt warm to her, like a person should.
He stumbled and caught himself mere inches from her. When his lips parted to suck in a sharp breath, Dell noted the scent
of mint accompanied by a crisp, light fragrance emanating from his body, which was suddenly towering over hers. As he gazed
down at her, his dark eyes blown wide in surprise, she felt like he could see into her very soul. A glinting spark came and
went in the deep brown faster than she could figure out what it meant; a light snapping on and off as if someone realized
they flipped the wrong switch. The sight of it stirred something deep inside Dell. Cole shook himself and blinked, as if it
had stirred him too and he wanted to bring the spark back to figure out why.
The rest of the room was oblivious to them. Jason had managed to get around Tommy and was heading for the stairs with Tommy
on his heels. Swear words bounced off the walls as they argued, but Dell tuned it out and focused on Cole.
When he recovered from being wrenched inside and their near collision, he cast her a shy glance. He cleared his throat and
started again. “Ms. Rodgers, I’m Cole Lewis with the Afterlife Administration. I’m here to inform you there has been an unfortunate
mix-up and—”
The sound of Jason’s and Tommy’s footsteps thundering overhead as they moved to the bedroom almost drowned out Dell’s question.
“I’m sorry, you’re with the what?”
“The Afterlife Administration. We oversee end-of-life transition, and—”
“You said there was a mix-up. What kind of mix-up?” Dell’s head was spinning, and she needed this charming though bumbling stranger to get to the point.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, an earsplitting shriek came from upstairs. She’d only heard Jason scream like
that the time an ex made off with his pet goldfish named Sushi.
Mariana jumped at the sound and went running for the stairs.
Dell didn’t need to join them to know they’d found her body lying stiller than stone in her bed. What she needed was an explanation
from the man who’d shown up at her door speaking of mix-ups.
Cole sheepishly winced. “Well, you see, there’s been a mistake. Your name is the same as another person’s—a much, much older person—and some files got confused, and now you’re—”
“SHE’S DEAD!” Jason screamed from upstairs loudly enough for people all the way in Oakland to hear him, surely.
Dell stared at Cole the Afterlife Administration agent in disbelief. It hadn’t seemed real until she heard the words from
her best friend’s mouth.
Cole grimaced, his ears turning pink again, and guiltily said, “Oops.”
Dell, a relatively even-keeled person, could count on one hand the times she’d memorably lost her cool. Most of them had been
in the kitchen and aimed at some variety of male colleague with a God complex who’d overstepped in one way or another. She
could feel this moment about to join her list of all the times the veritable shit had hit the fan.
She stepped toward Cole. Her voice chilled to below freezing. “What do you mean oops?”
Cole took a step back like he was afraid of her. His words came out slow and cautious. “I mean you are technically dead.”
“Technically?!” Dell shouted, and pointed a finger at him. “What does that mean?”
She’d backed him up to the entryway wall. He held his book to his chest like a tiny shield. “It means you are technically
no longer alive. But because it was a mix-up, I’ve been sent here to try to fix it.”
“Fix it?!”
All she could do was repeat his words. A coherent sentence wouldn’t form in her mind. She had just discovered not only that
death was apparently a bureaucratic process but also that the people in charge of it were wildly incompetent.
A mistake. A mistake. And now she was dead?
Thoughts jumbled up in her mind in a chaotic pile of panic. Her wedding was in a week. Her restaurant needed to be run. Her
book was coming out soon. Her plants needed watering. The sink in the guest bathroom was leaking. The runaway train picked up speed, and she soon found herself hyperventilating over everything that would fall off track when
she wasn’t even sure she needed oxygen anymore.
“It’s all right, Ms. Rodgers. We will sort this out. Just try to relax,” Cole said. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder,
and she swatted it away.
“Don’t tell me to relax! You just told me I’m dead and it was some kind of clerical error!”
He flinched at her bite just as Mariana came running down the stairs.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Mariana muttered over and over. She’d gone paler than a sheet. She tapped her phone, then held it to her ear. Dell watched her chew her thumb and realized she’d never seen her in such a state of distress. Mariana was more even-keeled than she was.
“Yes! Hi, I think my boss is dead,” she shouted at who must have been a 911 operator. “I have no idea. She’s in bed, not breathing.”
She paused to listen. “No, I don’t think so. I just saw her last night, and she was fine. She—” Her voice pinched up, and
she threw a hand to her mouth. Her eyes squeezed, and Dell’s chest ached at the sight of her crying. “She’s only thirty-three.
She doesn’t do drugs and really only drinks wine because distilled liquor gives her hiccups and makes her sloppy. She is allergic
to walnuts but is very careful to avoid them. She hasn’t had more than a cold in the past year; she never gets sick. Please send someone!”
Dell felt like her own eyes were about to wet both at sight of Mariana’s distress and at her expert knowledge of the most
trivial things about her.
She looked back at Cole. “This is a mess. How are you going to fix it?”
A bashful blush filled his face again. He looked down at his book. “Um, well, you see . . .”
“Wait. You do know how to fix it, right?”
“Yes, but . . .”
A sense of dread swallowed her whole just as Jason came stomping down the stairs. His face was blotched red, and he looked
faint at the same time. “Did you call 911?” he asked Mariana.
“Yes. They’re on their way,” she told him.
He nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. This is . . . I don’t know . . . Shit. I guess we need to call her family?”
Mariana looked at him, and her eyes washed with tears. Her chin began to wobble. She clutched her phone and nodded.
Jason clucked his tongue and shook his head. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He crossed the room and pulled Mariana into a hug. It made Dell’s dead chest hurt.
She turned back to Cole with a look that was half desperate plea, half fury. “Fix this. Now.”
Cole bobbed his head in a frantic nod. “Yes. Yes, I am going to fix this.”
It didn’t take Dell long to realize that standing around watching her loved ones mourn her sudden death was a terrible idea.
Her brothers showed up first, having completely abandoned whatever real estate venture had them both wearing suits on a Saturday
morning. She could tell them apart only because Alex had taken to scruffy facial hair in the year since his new daughter was
born, and Andy was clean-shaven. Aside from the stubble, the only thing unidentical about her brothers was their love lives.
Alex had married his college sweetheart and started a family, and Andy remained a perpetual bachelor and kept a Tinder account
with The Bad Twin prominently displayed in his profile.
Their faces were pulled into matching shades of shock as they paced about her living room. They were both stroking hands through
their dark hair and chewing their bottom lips, the latter a habit Dell fell victim to as well.
Her father showed up next. Once a broad man with a head of hair as thick and dark as his sons’, William Rodgers had grayed into a softer version of himself.
Despite having been a formidable authority figure to the outside world her whole life, he had been wrapped around Dell’s finger from the day she was born.
William Rodgers was putty in her hands, his darling girl, and the sight of his blue eyes misting over as he huddled into Alex’s and Andy’s distraught grip felt like a spear to her dead heart.
But it was her mother who broke everything.
Patricia showed up in jeans and a blue South Bay Food Bank T-shirt, as she’d already been on her way to the food drive in