Page 20 of The Dearly Departed

"Life can be very unfair," Leonard said, reading my mind again. "This little guy had been battling cancer since he was six months old."

"That's so shitty," I muttered, shaking my head.

No kid deserved to die.

No kid deserved to suffer.

"Yes, it is," he agreed. "I know you feel uncomfortable with the families. I understand that. Emotions make people feel all sorts of ways, and none of them are wrong. But I think, sometimes, it helps to remember what they've been through. You know, empathize a little. In many cases, we are the first people in contact with them after such an unthinkable loss. The impression we make on them matters.”

Empathy. I could've snorted at the word. Nobody had ever shown me a bit of it throughout the years my brothers and I had spent walking an endless lap through and around the gates of Hell. Not until …

I swung my gaze toward Leonard, who always seemed to have a twinkle in his eye, even on the gloomiest of days.

This dude hadn't known a single thing about any of us. Didn’t know where we had come from, didn’t know the things we had done to get by. All he was aware of was that we needed help, that we needed empathy … and he had given it to us without batting an eye.

No questions asked.

And I guessed, when I thought of it like that, the least I could do was show a bit to the people we collected the dead from.

"I'll try," I said.

He turned to look at me, a melancholy smile spreading across his face. "It's all I'll ever ask of you, Bram. Just that you try."

***

It was the middle of the day, but with how dark it was outside, you'd never know it.

The sky was clustered with black clouds against a gray backdrop, and Leonard mentioned about six times since arriving at the house of little Travis McDonald that it looked like rain.

But it didn’t start to pour as we walked up the driveway to the front door.

Instead, the storm greeted us inside.

As it turned out, I could easily handle the bodies of dead old people. The ones who'd gotten to live full lives, who'd had a chance. But at first sight, Travis McDonald's tiny form choked me up.

He looked like he was simply sleeping, snuggled up in his bed, crowded with stuffed animals and Mickey Mouse blankets, and I could've convinced myself of that had it not been for the unnatural grayish hue to his skin.

"Are you okay?" Leonard asked quietly, stopping at Travis's bedside to pull out his rosary beads.

Leonard always said a prayer before preparing the bodies we removed. It was the respectful thing to do, he would tell me, and although I wasn't sure I believed much in the prayers he recited, I could agree that it was, at the very least, nice.

I stood by the door, startled by the little boy's body tucked in his bed.

"He's so small," I choked out in a whisper, finding no reason to lie.

"Yes," Leonard agreed with a soft, somber look in his eyes. "It's very, very sad."

From outside the door, I could hear the muffled cries coming from Travis's mother and father. I turned my ear, listening as she wept. I was used to the tears, used to the sadness, but not like this. Not for a little boy who'd never gotten a chance to run and play and go to school and live, and for a stupid, stupid, selfish moment, I thought about myself now at seventeen.

Have I ever played?

I wasn’t sure I ever had. Not really anyway. I could remember times with Anna—pushing her on the swings or running after her in a field—but that was to entertain her. It had been work.

It's too late for me to play now.

It's too late for Travis.

"Shit," I uttered beneath my breath.