Free Good Mourning by Elizabeth Meyer Page A

of the other Crawford staff did—but he’d certainly seen the news reports all those years ago. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
    The only way to see what, exactly, was left of Annie was to cut open her skull. Bill started to cut with extreme precision while I braced myself for an eyeful of brains. I even held my gloved hands out to make sure that nothing fell on the floor. Finally, there was enough of an opening to see inside.
    That’s when the paper towels fell out.
    They unfolded like an accordion—pieces of Bounty that had been stuffed in there in place of what we were actually looking for. “Oh my God!” I said, my heart racing.
    â€œTake it easy, take it easy,” said Bill, his voice steady. He scratched his head and shrugged. “It might be in her stomach.”
    â€œHer stomach ? Why would her brain be in her stomach?”
    â€œSometimes after an autopsy, they take all the organs and stick ’em in a bag, then sew it up in the stomach,” said Bill.
    I raised my eyebrows.
    â€œIt’s just what they do,” he said. “I don’t make the rules.”
    It all sounded very Egyptian to me, but it’s not like I had any better ideas. I looked on as Bill undid the Y-shaped stitches in her abdomen and pulled out a bag—no joke, like a plastic bag—filled with organs. Bill laid them all out on the table, and I stared at the pieces, trying to figure out which was which. Biology was never my best subject, but after a quick scan, I was pretty sure our worst fears were realized: there was no brain. I felt a wave of anxiety. I was going tohave to go back upstairs, pick up the phone, and tell Annie’s son that we had no idea where his mother’s brain went. I tried to imagine the conversation:
    â€œHello again! It’s Elizabeth. So, now, here’s a funny story, I mean you’re really going to get a hoot out of this. We can’t find the brain! It totally vanished! We thought it would be . . . you know . . . IN HER HEAD. But it’s not. Ha! Anyway, it’s okay, because I got you a free roll of paper towels out of the deal . . .”
    I snapped back into the present. “What am I supposed to tell her son?” I asked Bill, a jolt of panic running through me. This was a big problem. Things had been going so well at Crawford. Thanks to all the extra hours I worked and my connection with clients, Tony had started to treat me more as a funeral planner than a receptionist, and I was allowed to do more than answer phones all day—the task I was actually hired for. I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this , I thought. I started longing for my apartment and a nice bottle of wine. In my old life, the one before Crawford, murder mysteries were never on the menu.
    When I got back to my desk, I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. Another of my dad’s sayings popped into my head: “Sometimes there’s no way out but through.”
    So through I would go. “Hello, sir, are you still there?” I said, feeling slightly queasy. (And not from a hangover this time.)
    â€œElizabeth. Here. Yes. Did you find it?” he said.
    Deep breath. “I’m sorry to relay this news, but we actually weren’t able to locate the brain. Or, rather, we looked . . . but it’s . . . it’s—it’s not there, sir.”
    â€œThat’s what I needed to know. Thank you,” he said. Then, before I could say another word: click . He hung up.
    What just happened? I thought.
    I never heard about the brain again—not at Crawford, not in the newspapers or Vanity Fair , which had covered Annie’s death at length. I wondered if they wanted the brain to test it for chemicals—maybe one last-ditch effort to prove their mom (the “kids,” of course then adults, still called her “Mummy”) had been murdered. Instead,