Page 1 of You'll Be the Death of Me

Prologue

Verdella Rodgers was blessed with an old lady’s name. Some might have called it elegant. Classy. Refined, perhaps. A callback to a glamorous age when women wore furs and smoked cigarettes from slender stems between their bejeweled fingers. Except Verdella’s parents had bestowed her the name in the age of Ashleys and Jessicas and Megans, leaving her elegant, refined old-lady name ripe for ridicule. She’d shed it along with the remaining dregs of puberty for the cooler, sleekerDellin high school, a name much more suited for her plucky personality, her drive and determination. Anyone who knew her knew Dell was a go-getter, a doer, an unrivaled success story. The single-syllable label that started with a punch and ended with a soft tongue curl had followed her through life like a perfectly tailored suit.

Still, the name Verdella Rodgers remained written on all her legal documents. Her driver’s license, her bank accounts, her house’s deed. On paper, she was an old woman in a pilly cardigan with five cats and an affinity forWheel of Fortune.

That was why Cole Lewis, recently minted transition specialistat the Afterlife Administration, could have been forgiven for his mix-up.

When it came time to transition Verdella Rodgers from this life to the next, he did not realize he’d selected Verdella Rodgers, thirty-three, of San Francisco, California, and not Verdella Rodgers, ninety-five, of Wichita, Kansas, from his list. Had he looked closer, he would have noticed the former was a young brunette in the prime of her life making waves in the Bay Area food scene with her new restaurant and mere days away from marrying the mayor’s son, and the latter was a retired teacher and beloved great-grandmother who’d lived a long, fulfilling life and was ready for rest.

Bleary-eyed in the office’s fluorescent light and still adjusting to his new position he was arguably unqualified for, Cole did not notice the mistake until it was too late. Until he’d hit Transition on the wrong Verdella Rodgers, and his monitor pulled up the profile image of a stunning young woman and not that of an elderly one.

His heart, which no longer beat but still registered sensation in his chest, sunk hard enough to make him feel faint.

When he realized he’d just done the undoable and ended the life of the wrong person, all he could say was “Oh.”

And then: “Shit.”

In a panic—one of his two default states, the other being law-abiding, rule-following upstanding citizen, a fact that currently had himfurtherpanicking—Cole left his cubicle and hurried to his supervisor’s office.

The department where he worked resembled what one mightpicture if asked to imaginecorporate hell: sterile gray walls, dull carpet, no windows. A break room that smelled like microwaved fish and an elevator that frequently got stuck between floors. (He’d been assured time and again he wasnot,in fact, in hell but rather a waiting area while his case was processed. The state of the department was simply due to understaffing and budget cuts.)

He arrived at his supervisor’s door and knocked.

Beatrice Gimble, Supervisor, Department of Accidental Deathsread the plaque beside the plain brown door.

“Yes?” a throaty voice called from inside.

“Ms. Gimble, I need to speak with you urgently,” he said to the closed door. He wanted to shove it open and demand to be heard, but his rule-following instinct, like a rod holding his spine straight, wouldn’t let him.

A pause passed. It made him fidget. He glanced down at his oxfords and noticed his socks didn’t match where they peeked out from his cuffed pants. He was getting sloppier in death.

“Come in,” Beatrice finally said, snapping him back to the moment.

Cole opened her door to a swirl of the musky floral perfume Beatrice favored. She reminded him of a stern librarian with her cat-eye glasses, sharp bob haircut, and truly hideous sweater collection. She was wearing a bright yellow sweater with big green flowers, which made Cole think of insects squashed on a windshield.

“Hello,” he said, still in a panic. He’d visited her office only a few times before: for his performance reviews and when he’d accepted his position as a transition specialist. She was always pushing him to show more initiative and confidence—something he found challenging given his under-qualification for his job.

“Mr. Lewis, how can I help you?” Beatrice asked. She narrowed her eyes over her glasses as if she were X-raying him. For all Cole knew, she was.

The Afterlife Administration was made up of people like Beatrice: executives, supervisors, administrators, and employees who’d always been there and weren’texactlyhuman—and people like him: humans who’d arrived after their death on earth.

And then there was an even smaller category of people, like Cole, who’d arrived in the Department of Accidental Deaths—DAD—because something had gone wrong on earth, and it was up to the department to investigate and file an official report before they were allowed to pass on, leaving them in an indeterminate limbo.

Cole had died, what, about a year ago now? He’d honestly lost track. That was the thing about the DAD: The longer you waited for your case to be investigated, the less you remembered your life on earth.

Surely, his mistake had just sentenced someone—this poor, too-young-to-die Verdella Rodgers—to a torturous wait in the DAD, and he needed to reverse it.

“I’ve made a mistake,” he told Beatrice. “A terrible one.”

Beatrice, in no hurry despite Cole’s state, continued to gaze at him over her glasses. “Go on,” she said with the speed of a lazy cat stretching in the sun. Cole had quickly learned folks with endless time on their hands tended to discount urgency.

He nervously bit his lip, afraid of how she might react. But it was better to be out with it than dance around excuses. “I transitioned the wrong person,” he confessed. “I confused her name with someone else’s. I need to undo it. Please.”

Beatrice stared at his worried face without much expression.Where someone a little less numbed to the constant and inevitable passing of lives from one stage to the next might have gasped or otherwise expressed dismay, she simply blinked at him and sighed. “Pity. We were doing so well this month.” She rose from her desk chair and walked to the wall where a small whiteboard hung, stating18 days since last incident. With a squeak of her hand against the board, she erased the eighteen and used a pen to fill in a zero.

Cole winced. “Please. You have to let me undo it.”

Beatrice recapped the pen she’d used and sunk back into her chair. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lewis. Mistakes here can’t be undone.”