Page 19 of The Dearly Departed

And we kept that promise.

We kept it for as long as we could.

***

Leonard was a man of his word, and we tried to follow his example.

I stopped stealing cigarettes, and when I ran out, I asked if he could grab some.

I never did try very hard to stop smoking altogether, but in an effort to not go through a pack too quickly, I did cut back significantly, only smoking one or two cigarettes a day, which was better than not trying at all, I guessed.

“Bram? You out here?”

Leonard’s voice called out from the side door—the same one we had broken into just a little over a year ago.

I huffed out with irritation, a cigarette hanging from my lips and my lighter still in my hand. I'd only just stepped outside a couple of minutes ago after vacuuming the entire main level of the funeral home, and the last thing I wanted right now was to be given another order.

But I would never complain out loud to Leonard. Not when he'd given us a safe place to live.

“Yeah?” I asked, wandering over with the unlit cigarette between my clenched lips.

He smiled apologetically when I came into view and said, “I just got a call. We have to do a removal.”

I held in a sigh. I hated removals, where we had to pick up a body from the place of death. And it wasn’t the part about being around dead people that irked me. As it turned out, as long as I didn’t know the dead person, I didn’t mind being around them at all. They were quiet, and they didn’t judge.

But the living, on the other hand …

The loved ones of the dead.

The mourners.

They liked to linger, making it harder for us to do our job. Leonard patiently gave them the time they needed to say their goodbyes while I hung around with him, silently itching to get the body bagged up and in the hearse.

It was frustrating work when all I wanted was to scream at them to leave us alone and let us do the job we had been sent to do. After all, we existed solely to make their lives easier. We did this so they didn’t have to. The least they could do was let us without getting in the way.

“All right,” I said, sliding my unsmoked cigarette back into the pack. “Let’s get it over with.”

In the hearse, Leonard drove. I wasn't far off from obtaining my own driver's license, but until then, I was a passenger, playing DJ and jabbing my finger at the buttons on the radio.

Normally, Leonard didn't mind. I thought he was just glad to have the company of a living person. But today, he reached out to turn the volume down, which could only mean one thing.

He wanted to talk about something.

"I need to talk to you about something," he said, immediately proving my point.

I turned to look out the window, hiding my smirk behind my hand. I'd only known the old guy for a little more than a year, and I could read him like a worn-out book I'd read a thousand times.

"What's up?"

"This job … it's a hard one," he said, his voice soft and somber. "I want you to be prepared before we go in there."

I turned to look at him, my brow furrowed. "A body is a body, man. How hard can it—"

"This one is a little kid. A boy, only a couple of years old. Practically a baby."

A weird, indescribable feeling pressed uncomfortably against my chest as I slumped back into my seat.

Of course, I knew babies and young kids weren't immune to death. My life had been wiped clean of most innocent illusions at a very young age. Still, the thought that there were kids out there, kids just like me, who were given the chance to live despite all the misfortune they’d been dealt, while others didn't get to live past the age of two seemed so …