Page 16 of You'll Be the Death of Me

The sound of Jason’s and Tommy’s footsteps thundering overhead as they moved to the bedroom almost drowned out Dell’s question.

“I’m sorry, you’re with thewhat?”

“The Afterlife Administration. We oversee end-of-life transition, and—”

“You said there was a mix-up. What kind of mix-up?” Dell’shead was spinning, and she needed this charming though bumbling stranger to get to the point.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, an earsplitting shriek came from upstairs. She’d only heard Jason scream like that the time an ex made off with his pet goldfish named Sushi.

Mariana jumped at the sound and went running for the stairs.

Dell didn’t need to join them to know they’d found her body lying stiller than stone in her bed. What she needed was an explanation from the man who’d shown up at her door speaking of mix-ups.

Cole sheepishly winced. “Well, you see, there’s been a mistake. Your name is the same as another person’s—a much,mucholder person—and some files got confused, and now you’re—”

“SHE’S DEAD!” Jason screamed from upstairs loudly enough for people all the way in Oakland to hear him, surely.

Dell stared at Cole the Afterlife Administration agent in disbelief. It hadn’t seemed real until she heard the words from her best friend’s mouth.

Cole grimaced, his ears turning pink again, and guiltily said, “Oops.”

Dell, a relatively even-keeled person, could count on one hand the times she’d memorably lost her cool. Most of them had been in the kitchen and aimed at some variety of male colleague with a God complex who’d overstepped in one way or another. She could feel this moment about to join her list of all the times the veritable shit had hit the fan.

She stepped toward Cole. Her voice chilled to below freezing. “What do you meanoops?”

Cole took a step back like he was afraid of her. His words came out slow and cautious. “I mean you aretechnicallydead.”

“Technically?!” Dell shouted, and pointed a finger at him. “What does that mean?”

She’d backed him up to the entryway wall. He held his book to his chest like a tiny shield. “It means you are technically no longer alive. But because it was a mix-up, I’ve been sent here to try to fix it.”

“Fix it?!”

All she could do was repeat his words. A coherent sentence wouldn’t form in her mind. She had just discovered not only that death was apparently a bureaucratic process but also that the people in charge of it were wildly incompetent.

A mistake.A mistake.And now she wasdead?

Thoughts jumbled up in her mind in a chaotic pile of panic. Her wedding was in a week. Her restaurant needed to be run. Her book was coming out soon. Her plants needed watering. The sink in the guest bathroom was leaking.The runaway train picked up speed, and she soon found herself hyperventilating over everything that would fall off track when she wasn’t even sure she needed oxygen anymore.

“It’s all right, Ms. Rodgers. We will sort this out. Just try to relax,” Cole said. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she swatted it away.

“Don’t tell me to relax! You just told meI’m deadand it was some kind of clerical error!”

He flinched at her bite just as Mariana came running down the stairs.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Mariana muttered over and over. She’d gone paler than a sheet. She tapped her phone, then held it to her ear. Dell watched her chew her thumb andrealized she’d never seen her in such a state of distress. Mariana was more even-keeled than she was.

“Yes! Hi, I think my boss is dead,” she shouted at who must have been a 911 operator. “I have no idea. She’s in bed, not breathing.” She paused to listen. “No, I don’t think so. I just saw her last night, and she was fine. She—” Her voice pinched up, and she threw a hand to her mouth. Her eyes squeezed, and Dell’s chest ached at the sight of her crying. “She’s only thirty-three. She doesn’t do drugs and really only drinks wine because distilled liquor gives her hiccups and makes her sloppy. She is allergic to walnuts but is very careful to avoid them. She hasn’t had more than a cold in the past year; she never gets sick.Pleasesend someone!”

Dell felt like her own eyes were about to wet both at sight of Mariana’s distress and at her expert knowledge of the most trivial things about her.

She looked back at Cole. “This is a mess. How are you going to fix it?”

A bashful blush filled his face again. He looked down at his book. “Um, well, you see...”

“Wait. Youdoknow how to fix it, right?”

“Yes, but...”