Page 34 of Melancholia

I never⁠—

A light goes off in my head and I walk toward Cecil’s office. Something in me recoils, and I go through all the possibilities in my head before I push open his heavy, creaking office door.

“Sorry, Cecil,” I whisper as I look around his well-decorated office space. He barely spends any time here anymore and mostly uses the private space to work with clients on the worst day of their lives. He told me once that people prefer privacy when they’re going to break down over flowers, coffins, and funeral scheduling.

“Do you think your mom cried in an office like this?” Andrew skims his fingers over the old, nonfiction books on the shelves that Cecil had informed me were collected by his father and passed onto him when he inherited the mortuary. “Or do you think she sat there, stone-faced and cold, like she did every day after that?”

“Don’t help,” I instruct dryly, turning to look at the ghost of Andrew for a second. I’m not stupid. I know Andrew is just voicing what I’m thinking, that he can’t exactly have independent thoughts of his own. But it still hurts, and it’s so hard not to wonder just that.

Did she cry?

Did she sit in an office like this one while making the arrangements for Elaina’s funeral? The details are blurry from back then, and no matter how I run the events over and over, I just can’t remember⁠—

It doesn’t matter.

My movements become automatic as I move around to stand beside Cecil’s chair. I don’t have the audacity to sit down, so I gently pull open the top drawer where Cecil keeps the few things he actually uses in this shrine of an office.

Notepad. Pens. A stapler that’s been jammed since way before I got here.

Finally, his ledger. Even though he barely uses it anymore, he’s shown me the names that were marked down in this book for however many years. Before the computer, there was the ledger. Now, sometimes, there is still the ledger when Cecil wants to use his fancy pen or the computer is down.

“Sorry.” I sigh again, feeling like I’m intruding. Carefully, I crack open the ledger and leaf through the pages of names. Cecil’s handwriting is much like mine. That is to say, sloppy as hell and sometimes hard to read. Some pages have marked-through names, others have a few empty lines marked through or used for comments about names above.

Halfway through, I find a folded-up piece of white paper. I huff out a breath and gently tug the paper free. It comes out easily, and with that found, I close the ledger and put it back in the drawer where I found it.

While I doubt Cecil would be mad at me for coming in here if I need something, it still feels like an invasion of his privacy. Unfolding the paper, I stare down at the ink on it, wishing the ring would just drop out.

But of course, I’m not that lucky.

I have no tailor, yet garments change here.

I have no painter, yet faces are restored.

I have no audience, yet every detail matters.

Seek the room where the final portrait is prepared without a canvas.

I’m already out of Cecil’s office before I can read the clue a second time. It’s quite a bit longer than the first, and part of me can’t help but admire Amir’s writing skills in these clues. In any other circumstance, this might be fun to figure out. Hell, I would probably sit down with my coffee and puzzle through it, instead of frantically pacing along the lobby of the mortuary with my fingers raking through my hair until it’s half fallen from its knot on top of my head.

“I hate this,” I grumble. “God, I hate this. I think I’d rather, I don’t know, sit through another driver’s test or something.”

Andrew paces beside me, turning when I do, and looks at the note in my hands. “Or, you could look at it again. Maybe sit down so you can stop focusing on not bumping into the chair or the desk?” He gives me a plaintive look that I return, but he has a point.

“Okay, okay.” But I don’t sit in the lobby. This has never felt like my place, so I shoulder open the double doors leading back to the embalming room. Once I’m there, I feel a little better. Like this is where I’m supposed to be, instead of where the public comes to meet with Sarah or Cecil and eventually tour the viewing room or flip through the coffin book.

God, maybe my job really is a bit morbid. Not that I think there’s any ‘woo woo’ like Betty says, and it doesn’t mean I love it here any less. But today, I can sort of see why this place weirds people out. Especially when I’m the only one here.

Andrew leans on the desk when I sit in the spinning chair, and as I smooth the paper down in front of me, he glances down at it as well.

“I hate this,” I inform him flatly. “This is literally awful. Did you know that?”

He shrugs but points to the first line of the paper, running his finger along the words. With his hand this close, I can distinctly see the ring line on his finger, and I swear my mind is doing this just to taunt me about what I need to find. And what I don’t have.

“I have no tailor, but garments change here.” The only time garments are on anyone when they’re here is when they first roll in. By the time they’re back in the cooler, their clothes are off and placed in a bag for their loved ones to claim. Or, I suppose, at the end, after we’ve switched them into the clothes their bodies wear for the funeral.

“I have no painter, yet faces are restored. Well, that doesn’t make sense. There’s no painting going on here, and the only restoration—” I’m on my feet before I can even think to stand up, and the chair rolls back to thump gently against the wall.

I’m stupid.