The warmth of my apartment was almost stifling compared to Guillermo’s place. I shrugged off my coat and balanced it on top of the mass of winter attire on the rack by my front door. The rack protested, sending my wool peacoat into a crumpled heap on the floor. I left it be, telling myself—as I did with most of the accumulating clutter in my apartment—that I’d deal with it later.
To be fair, not all of the clutter belonged to me. I’d inherited the enviably located two-bedroom from my grandfather after he died. Well, technically, I’d been on the lease since I was a kid. It was a shrewd move on his part to ensure that no amount of New York City real estate bureaucracy could cheat me out of my rightful claim to his rent-controlled legacy. For seventeen years, we’d shared the third-floor apartment in a brownstone that looked comparatively unloved next to its manicured West Village neighbors. Grandpa had been gone for more than thirteen years now, but I still couldn’t bring myself to sort through his belongings. Instead, I’d gradually slotted my own possessions in the limited spaces between his. Even though I spent my days looking death in the face, I still couldn’t seem to accept that his absence from my life was permanent.
Grief plays tricks on you that way—a familiar whiff of cologne or a potential sighting of your person in a crowd, and all the knots you’ve tied inside yourself to manage the pain of losing them suddenly unravel.
Warming my hands around a steaming cup of Earl Grey, I stood in front of my bookshelves, which were packed tightly with Grandpa’s biology textbooks, musty atlases, and sea-faring novels. Wedged in between them, three dilapidated notebooks stood out, not so much for their appearance, but for the single word inscribed on the spine of each. On the first, REGRETS; the second, ADVICE; the third, CONFESSIONS. Aside from my pets, these were the things I’d save in a fire.
Ever since I started working as a death doula, I’d had the same ritual, documenting each client’s final words before the breath had left their body. Over the years, I’d found that people often felt the need to say something as they were dying, something of significance—as if they realized it was their last chance to leave a mark on the world. Usually those last messages fit into one of three categories: things they’d wish they’d done differently, things they’d learned along the way, or secrets they’d kept that they were finally ready to reveal. Collecting these words felt like my sacred duty, especially when I was the only other person in the room. And even when I wasn’t, family members were usually too consumed with grief to think about writing down such things. My emotions, on the other hand, were always neatly tucked away.
Setting my tea aside, I stretched on tiptoes to retrieve the book titled CONFESSIONS. It’d been a while since I’d been able to make an entry in this one. Lately, it seemed like everyone had reached the end of their lives with regrets.
I nestled into the sofa and flipped through the leather-bound notebook to a clean page. In my compact scrawl, I inscribed Guillermo’s name, address, the day’s date, and his confession. I hadn’t expected it, to be honest—I’d sensed him slipping away and thought he was already unconscious. But then his eyes opened and he put his hand on my arm. Not dramatically, but lightly, as if he’d been on his way out the door and had forgotten to tell me something.
“I accidentally killed my little sister’s hamster when I was eleven,” he whispered. “I left the door of its cage open to annoy her and then it went missing. We found it three days later wedged between the sofa cushions.”
As soon as the words departed his lips, his body relaxed with serene weightlessness, like he was floating on his back in a swimming pool.
Then he was gone.
* * *
I couldn’t help thinking about that hamster as my own pets gathered around me on the sofa that evening. George, the chubby bulldog I’d found six years ago burrowing through the trash cans downstairs, rested his wet chin on my knee. Lola and Lionel, the tabby siblings I’d rescued as kittens from a box left outside the church on Carmine Street, took turns slinking figure eights around my ankles. The silkiness of their fur soothed me.
I tried not to imagine whether the hamster had suffered. They were pretty feeble creatures, so it probably hadn’t taken much. Poor Guillermo, carrying that guilt with him for fifty years.
I glanced at my phone, balanced on the faded sofa arm. The only time it ever rang—aside from robocalls about car insurance and fake IRS audits—was when someone wanted to hire me. Socializing was a skill I’d never really mastered. When you’re an only child raised by your introverted grandfather, you learn to appreciate your own company. It wasn’t that I was opposed to the idea of friendship; it’s just that if you don’t get close to anyone, you can’t lose them. And I’d already lost enough people.
Still, sometimes I wondered how I got to this point: thirty-six years old and my whole life revolved around waiting for strangers to die.
Savoring the bergamot vapor from my tea, I closed my eyes and let my body relax for the first time in weeks. Holding in your emotions all the time is kind of exhausting, but it’s what makes me good at what I do. It’s my responsibility to always remain placid and even-keeled for my clients, even when they’re frightened and panicking and don’t know how to let go.
As my feelings began to thaw, I leaned back into the sofa cushions, allowing the weight of sadness to settle across my chest and a yearning to squeeze my heart.
There’s a reason I know this city’s full of lonely people.
I’m one of them.
3
Usually after a job ended, I spent the next day catching up on the mundane domestic duties I’d neglected while working. Household chores and bill paying felt inconsequential when someone was dying. Three weeks’ worth of dirty laundry bulged in the basket I was lugging to the basement. Grandpa hadn’t just bequeathed me the rare treasure of a rent-controlled apartment, but also one with a laundry room in the building. Saving me from the New York City burden of trekking to the laundromat was one of the small but infinite ways he’d made my life easier, even in his absence.
On my way back upstairs, I stopped by the mailbox to unleash the flow of envelopes and catalogs that always awaited my sporadic visits. I rarely got anything worth reading.
A gravelly voice called from midway up the staircase. “On vacation again, kid?”
The shuffling gait that accompanied it was as familiar as the voice itself. Leo Drake was a sprightly fifty-seven when I moved in with Grandpa at age six, and the intervening decades had barely made their mark, except that his hair was now a little more salt than pepper, and his swagger a little slower.
He was also still my only friend.
“I guess you could call it that,” I said, waiting as he made his way down the last few steps. “Though I’d prefer the beach to the laundry room.”
As a tall, slender man with high cheekbones, Leo’s age only advanced his elegance. It fascinated me how elderly people’s fashion preferences tended to stay frozen in a certain era, usually the years they’d been in their thirties or forties. Often it was due to thrift—why buy new clothes when you already had plenty—but for most it seemed to be a nostalgia for what they considered to be their glory days. The time when more of their life was ahead than behind them.