Free The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult Page B

Sage—”
    “McPhee,” I jump in, turning slightly so that my scar is better hidden. “I’m a reporter for the Maine Express. ”
    I realize too late that sounds like a train, not a newspaper.
    “I’m doing a story about a day in the life of a mortician,” I say.
    Adam and I both watch Robert scrutinize me. I’m still wearing my baking outfit: loose T-shirt, baggy shorts, Crocs. I’m sure no self-respecting reporter would be caught dead at an interview looking like this.
    “She called me last week to arrange a time to shadow me,” Adam lies.
    Robert nods. “Of course. Ms. McPhee, I’m happy to answer any questions that Adam can’t.”
    Adam visibly relaxes. “Why don’t you follow me?” He puts his hand on my arm, steering me into the facility. There is a shock as his hand touches my bare skin.
    When he leads me down the hall, I shiver. It’s cold in the basement of the funeral home. Adam enters a room on the right and closes the door behind us.
    On the table is an elderly woman, naked beneath a sheet.
    “Adam,” I say, swallowing. “Is she . . . ?”
    “Well, she’s not taking a nap,” he says, laughing. “Come on, Sage. You know what I do for a living.”
    “I didn’t plan on watching you do it.”
    “ You’re the one who came up with the reporter angle. You could have told him you were a cop and that you needed to take me down to the station.”
    It smells like death in here, and frost, and antiseptic. I want to fold myself into Adam’s arms, but there is a window in the door and at any moment, Robert or someone else could walk by.
    He hesitates. “Maybe you could just look the other way? Because I sort of have to get to work, especially in this heat.”
    I nod, and stare at the wall. I hear Adam sorting through metallic instruments, and then something buzzes to life.
    I am holding Josef’s story like an acorn, tucked away. I don’t want to share it yet. But I don’t want it to take root, either.
    At first I think Adam must be using a saw, but then I peek from the corner of my eye and realize he is shaving the dead woman. “Why are you doing that ?”
    The electric blade growls as he rounds her chin. “Everyone gets shaved. Even kids. Peach fuzz makes the makeup more noticeable, and you want that ‘memory picture’—the last image you have of a loved one—to be natural.”
    I am fascinated by his economy of movement, by his efficiency. This is a part of his life I know so little about, and I’m hungry for any tidbit of him I can take away. “When does the embalming happen?”
    He looks up, surprised by my interest. “After we shape the face. Once the fluid enters the veins, the body firms up.” Adam slips a piece of cotton between the left eye and the eyelid, and then sets a small plastic cap on top, like a giant contact lens. “Why are you here, Sage? It’s not because you have a burning desire to be a mortician. What happened to you today?”
    “Do people ever tell you things you wish they wouldn’t?” I blurt out.
    “Most of the people I meet can’t talk anymore.” I watch Adam thread a suture string onto a curved needle. “But their relatives give me an earful. Usually they say what they should have said to their loved one before she died.” He slips the needle through the jaw below the gumsand threads it through the upper jaw into a nostril. “I guess I’m the last stop, you know? The repository of regret.” Adam smiles. “Sounds like a Goth band, doesn’t it?”
    The needle passes through the septum into the other nostril, and back into the mouth. “What brought this on?” he asks.
    “I had a conversation with someone today that really rattled me. I’m not sure what I should do about it.”
    “Maybe he doesn’t want you to do anything. Maybe he just needed you to listen.”
    But it isn’t that simple. The confessions Adam hears from the relatives of the deceased are should-have s and wish-I’d s, not I did s. Once you are given a grenade with the