Chapter 4 #3
San Jose where Dell had planned to spend the day. Even dressed down, she looked elegant and refined. Her graying blond hair
was slipping loose from the bun she’d spun it into, and when she folded herself into Dell’s father’s arms and whispered, “Oh,
Billy,” in a soft, broken whimper, it shattered everything Dell had left.
“I can’t be here,” Dell said to Cole, who’d been standing beside her watching the scene unfold. “I need to go.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll go with you,” he said.
Despite knowing no one could see her—because not a single member of the family she’d known for thirty-three years raised an
eyebrow at her presence, nor did her best friend, assistant, or fiancé—she felt exposed walking outside in her nightgown.
The front door still stood open. Outside, the foggy morning air carried its customary crispness, but it didn’t feel the same
on Dell’s bare arms and legs. Something blunted it. It was the same thing that kept her bare feet from fully sensing the hard
concrete she walked on, she guessed, though she had no idea what it could be.
She stopped on the edge of the walkway where she and Jason began jogging every morning, and stared blankly at the bay. The
colors were faded, the bridge a dull shade of rust and the water pale gray. Even Robbie loitering in the distance looked like
he wore a worn shade of black.
“Sorry you had to see that,” Cole softly said.
Dell jumped at the sound of his voice, having forgotten this strange man had followed her. She stepped back and took in the sight of him with fresh eyes.
He was still handsome, perhaps more so out in the daylight. His hair was the unruly kind of tousled, just this side of messy,
and his clothing looked like he’d only managed to scoop himself up off the floor in a tastefully careless way. She was tempted
to reach out and straighten his crooked tie, but somehow the idea of altering the whole perfectly disheveled scene felt criminal.
He was long and leanly muscular—a completely different shape than Tommy—and being barefoot was only making her feel smaller.
He was the kind of man she could wear four-inch heels beside and still feel dainty. His expression of concern carried something
else with it, something intriguing and warm, which sent a curl of heat to Dell’s face. She was suddenly extremely aware she
was standing in front of him in nothing but her underwear and a thin, short layer of satin.
She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at him. “Yes, I wasn’t planning on living out a warped version of It’s a Wonderful Life this morning.”
A shy smile lifted his lips, as if he wasn’t sure he should laugh at her dark humor. “At least you know they love you.”
The comment hit Dell like a sledgehammer. She knew her family loved her, of course she did. They were the type to write it
in greeting cards and say it on phone calls. There’d been no shortage of affection in her household growing up. Her parents
still held hands in public. But witnessing their devastation over her loss put it into new perspective. Words and sentiments
were one thing. Visceral reactions and uncontrollable grief were another.
The sensation of tears boiled up behind Dell’s eyes, burning like a small fire. When she went to wipe away the drops that should have been falling, she felt nothing but supple skin.
She flinched with a frown and rubbed her dry fingers together. She scowled at Cole. “I can’t cry?” she said incredulously.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Afraid not.”
An exasperated scoff escaped her mouth. She thought back to how she’d felt when she woke what seemed like ages ago already,
the peculiar absence of . . . everything. “So, what, I have no more bodily functions?” she asked, and shoved her fingers into
her neck to check for a pulse.
Nothing.
“Right. Your body is basically preserved as it was when you, um . . . passed.”
“Interesting,” Dell said. She did a small shimmy dance to see how she felt. If she’d passed sometime in the night, there was a good chance there were things that needed taking care of. “Can I pee?”
“Not necessary,” he said with a bemused look on his face as he watched her dance.
She felt his eyes zip over her chest bouncing around under her nightgown. He quickly looked away.
“Wait. Why?” She stopped dancing when a piece clicked into place. One that had her suddenly terrified.
“Well, if you don’t need to eat, then there’s no need to—”
“I can’t eat?!” she shrieked, her exact worst fear coming true.
He jumped sideways.
“No, no, no!” She squeezed her face in her hands.
Dell held no strong convictions about the existence of heaven or hell, but in any iteration of an afterlife she’d imagined, there was always an endless supply of delicious foods. “You might as well kill me now,” she sourly muttered. She cast him another glare. “Oh wait, you already did that!”
He shrunk with a cringe. “I’m really sorry,” he said like it might have been enough.
She scoffed again and looked out at the water. The fog was making way for the parade of sailboats braving the summer tide.
Stripes and checkers and block colors had begun dotting the bay, albeit in a faded version of the normally vibrant patchwork.
Dell was still struggling to make sense of anything at all.
She turned back to Cole. He looked at her with his deep, dark eyes as if he were peering into her soul again, and she got
the sense he’d do anything she asked. Go anywhere she wanted. Perhaps it was his remorse. Perhaps it was something else.
She had an obvious question for him, and for some reason she couldn’t identify, she found it lodged in her throat around a
thick lump when she tried to ask.
“Why can I see you?” she eventually mustered. “Are you dead too?”
The look that crossed his face was hard to place. Resigned, maybe. Sad, even. He combed a hand through his mussed hair. “Yes.”
The single syllable carried an enormous weight. And it made sense, Dell realized. He wasn’t an old man, withered and wearied
by a long life. If she had to guess, he was maybe a handful of years older than she was, if that. He’d obviously died young.
Asking him how it had happened felt too intimate for having known him so briefly.
She decided to ask him something else.
“How’d you end up working for the— What did you call it?”
“The Afterlife Administration.”
“Right,” she said with a nod, as if they were having a totally normal conversation about totally normal things. “Can I find them on Glassdoor?”
He huffed a laugh, and Dell felt something in her hollow chest reflexively lift at the sound of it. Her own lips twitched
up into a tiny grin.
“Definitely not,” he said. “And it’s a bit of a long story.”
“Well, I’d love to hear it.” She was aiming for sincerity—because surely, this was going to be a doozy of a story—but her
impatience bled through.
Cole slightly winced at her tone. “Okay, so there’s this whole department within the Afterlife Administration called the Department
of Accidental Deaths. Their job is to investigate deaths that happen before their time.”
“Only the good die young, right?” Dell quipped, unable to believe this conversation was real.
“So I’ve heard,” Cole said. “Anyway, the DAD—”
“Wait, it spells dad?”
“Yes, but we call it the D-A-D.” He distinctly pronounced each letter. “The DAD’s job is to investigate the cause of each
premature death and file a report. It’s very bureaucratic. Think of them like any government organization that has to file
a report after an emergency or disaster.”
“FEMA for the afterlife, got it,” Dell said.
“Correct. So, while the DAD is working on that investigation, the deceased”—he paused to point at himself—“have to wait for
the official report to be filed before they can move on.”
Dell nodded, following along. “And how long does that take?”
“Long enough they offer you a job to pass the time,” he said with a tight smile.
A frown pulled Dell’s mouth down. “Wait, wait, wait. So, the people who accidentally killed you make you wait while they figure out what went wrong, and it takes so long that they make you work for them?”
“They didn’t make me. I opted to.”
“Why?”
“Because it was better than staring at the walls as I slowly forgot my life. See, the longer you’re waiting, the less you
remember.”
Dell chewed her lip. “That sounds awful. How long have you been waiting?”
“About a year.”
“A year?!”
“I told you: very bureaucratic.”
“And you didn’t try to just bust out on your own?”