Page 71 of The Dearly Departed

"Oh, shut up. You know what I meant," Shawn grumbled, shaking his head. "I mean, we have to get his body, right? Then … fuck, did he want to be cremated or—"

"I have his body," I said, dropping my gaze away from Shawn's. "I'll handle his cremation."

"You have him already?"

I nodded. "The hospital released his corpse to me. They figured we'd be handling everything here anyway. Might as well send him home instead of letting him take up space in their morgue."

The lies kept rolling off my tongue with ease. It was better this way than to tell the truth. But how far would they take me? How long until I got caught?

Shawn nodded as if it all made perfect sense. "Right. And you're sure he wanted to be cremated?"

"Yeah," I replied, grateful to finally speak a bit of truth. "His family has a columbarium garden. His son, wife … I think his parents and grandparents might be there, too, but I'm not entirely sure about that."

They nodded in unison as Ike said, "Cool. All right. And you’re sure you're okay doing it? ‘Cause, I mean, I don't really wanna do it, but if you don't, I could—"

"Nah, it's all right," I said. "I got it handled. Did you guys want to … you know, say goodbye or—"

"No," they both said, just as I had known they would.

Ike didn't mind handling a corpse as long as he didn't know the person in life, and Shawn had never developed a taste for that side of the business. He had done what he had to in order to get his funeral director’s license, and that was about it unless I needed him to handle preparation or a removal.

"What about services?" Shawn asked. "Wake? Mass?"

"We'll do it all," I answered without hesitation.

Because if I couldn't save him, the least I could do was give him the send-off he deserved.

I would give him the best one there was.

***

After Shawn and Ike left Leonard’s office and returned to their respective rooms to get dressed for the day ahead, I went out to the hearse to collect Leonard’s sheet-wrapped body and transport it down to the basement with the help of a stretcher and the house’s elevator.

A hollow ache swelled from my heart to the depths of my gut as I stared at the part of the sheet that I knew concealed his head. I could picture the bullet wound piercing his forehead. I was grateful for that wound now, knowing it’d been a serendipitous bit of mercy at the end of his life instead of him suffering the same agonizing death as the waiter I had killed. But I was scared to look at it now, terrified to be alone with the body of the man I’d loved as if he’d been my own father, as if seeing it would make it all the more real.

“God, I don’t want to do this,” I said, talking to him the way I’d spoken to countless bodies before.

I pulled my stool over and sat beside the stretcher, still wearing clothes that weren’t mine. They felt wrong—too small and tight—and I thought, But does anything feel right? Will anything ever feel right again?

My elbow plonked against the stretcher beside his body, and I held my head in my hand, grinding the heel of my palm against my eye socket, shaking my head, and deflating more with every burst of breath from my quivering lips.

“Dammit,” I whispered. “What the fuck were you doing there? God, you shouldn’t have even known him.”

He shouldn’t have, but he had.

I shouldn’t be talking to him like this—dead on my table, never to return again—but I was.

I didn’t know how, but I knew, somehow, it led back to me and Isaac. And I knew I’d feel guilty for that association for the rest of my life.

“I’m sorry,” I said, exhaling past the harrowing despair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, man.”

Yet, no matter how many times I said it, I knew it wasn’t enough to erase the things that had been done. Because he had trusted me, and I had gotten him killed, and what could possibly be said to make that better?

I swallowed against my grief and fear, and without a second thought, I pulled the sheet back to look at his face, grateful to find that his eyes had been closed. The blood from the bullet wound had been smeared and wiped away, as if someone had tried to clean him up a bit before wrapping his body. It was an act somewhat close to respect, and I guessed, all things considered, I appreciated it for what it was.

I tore my gaze from his face to look over the rest of his body. I wouldn’t bother dressing him in anything else, and I wouldn’t bother preparing his corpse in any way—there was no point when there would be no open casket viewing. But I looked over him anyway, making sure there wasn’t anything on his person that I didn’t want to be put into the retort to be cremated.

That was when I noticed his clenched fist, laid over his heart.