Page 10 of Mortis

Now that he was in his seventies, I was the resident technician, ready to take over the business whenever he finally decided to retire.

Assuming he ever retired.

Every time I brought it up, he acted like I was personally trying to put him in one of the coffins.

It should have been my dad standing in my shoes. If tradition had held, the funeral home would already have been his. Instead, he’d decided rock and roll and rooms full of the living were more his thing. These days, he travelled around Europe in a Led Zeppelin cover band with my mum acting as his devoted groupie. I saw them once or twice a year if I was lucky and still received a postcard from every stop on their endless tour.

I didn’t mind. I kept every single one.

While they were off gallivanting, I’d been left in the care of my grandparents, growing up in a home filled with the kind of love every child deserved but didn’t always get.

Children like Arlo.

My grandad had found him asleep in the local park eight years ago, when Arlo was eighteen and I was twenty. Arlo had run away from home after his sperm donor discovered he was gay and kicked him out. With little more than the contents of his backpack and the small amount of money he’d secretly saved, Arlo had hitchhiked and bounced between buses until he eventually ended up here in Blackthorn.

Spotting him asleep beneath a tree, soaked through from the pouring rain, my grandad had dragged him to the local café for a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. And within an hour, he’d convinced Arlo to move into the spare room of our bungalow. My grandma’s old craft room. A room that had stood empty since her death two years prior.

Part of me suspected Arlo hadn’t been given much choice in the matter. My grandad had always approached charity with the subtlety of a charging rhino. Still, Arlo had never seemed unhappy with the arrangement, even if he didn’t leave his new room for a week after moving in. At least not while we were around. And when he did finally emerge, my grandad offered to show him the ropes at the funeral home.

Now, almost a decade later, Arlo was more than an employee.

He was an extra grandson.

A brother.

My best friend.

An Adler in all but name.

Though my grandad regularly reminded him he was welcome to make it official if and when he liked.

The two of them ran the front of the business like a well-oiled machine, happily dealing with the living while I managed the back. A place where I was far more comfortable, among the dead.

My grandad released my shoulder and turned back to Arlo, lightly swatting his thigh. “Come on, you little terror. You can help me dust the urns before the Wendel family arrives.”

“They’re not due for an hour,” Arlo complained as he slid off the counter.

My grandad glanced over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Well, if you’re quick enough, you can dig into the posh biscuits before they get here.”

The posh biscuits in question were kept under lock and key, reserved exclusively for grieving families during arrangements and viewings. Usually, we were left with whatever value packs my grandad picked up from Lidl during his weekly shop.

To be offered the good stuff so freely? Well, I’d seen Arlo flirt with police officers, argue with wasps, and talk his way into many free takeaways. But I’d never seen him move as fast as he did right now.

“Even the chocolate ones?” He ripped off his mask and apron and dumped them on the counter, leaving his shoulder-length hair in complete disarray. “Moz! Even the chocolate ones?”

The door swung shut behind him as he bolted from the room.

Finally, Dorothy and I were alone.

“Arlo’s a nightmare, isn’t he?” I said softly, despite knowing she couldn’t hear me.

My mind drifted back to the sodden, scrawny teenager who’d first stepped through our front door all those years ago, clinging to my grandad’s windbreaker with wide, icy-blue doe eyes. And I thought about how he’d slowly found his confidence and his voice. How he’d somehow become the sassy, pint-sized hurricane he was today.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Still.” I removed the trocar I’d reinserted from Dorothy’s abdomen and placed it on the equipment tray. “I’m glad he’s happy.”

Are you happy?