Free Every Time We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa Page A

in their own bed, and they sat up, listening for their baby cooing or fretting downstairs. Instead, they heard someone telling Connie to hurry up already and felt a pain where the sharp edge of a picture frame had dug into their side. Then they remembered and had to suffer their death all over again.
    The problem with the dead was they were not actually dead.

    The first place, a motor factory, said she was too late: they had just taken on three. The cereal company said to go see McGarry at the end of the hall, but when McGarry introduced himself as Dan, Grace burst into tears. Dan McGarry waited until she’d found her handkerchief, then stood up and walked her to the door. “Goodbye, dear,” he said, and he called out, “Next.” The third place was the red brick clock factory on a hill across the river. A woman with smooth, glossy braids wrapped around her head sat behind a window in the office. Grace leaned close to the glass and said, “Hello?” but the woman kept typing. Grace rapped on the window, more loudly than she had meant to, then pressed her hand against the glass to erase the sound. The woman looked up. Her eyebrows were two long black wings; one arched up sternly. “Please do not put your hands on my glass,” she said.
    Behind Grace, there was a giggle. She turned to see five women sitting on a long bench.
    “If you’re here about a job,” the woman behind the glass said, and Grace shouted, “Yes! Yes, I am!”
    More laughter.
    “Take a seat with the others.”
    No one on the bench moved to make room for Grace, so she stood until the door banged open and a tall, sandy-haired man hurried in. “Hello, ladies,” he said. He had worried eyebrows, and one of his shirttails was untucked, but his voice was full and dark and flecked with warmth. It reminded Grace of hot chocolate. “I’m Vanderburgh. Manager. This way, please.” They followed him to another room and lined up at a desk. He asked where they were from and where else they had worked, and when it was Grace’s turn, she said, “I worked at home,” which made one of the other women snort, but Mr. Vanderburgh said, “That’s fine.” He hadhound dog eyes, kind but sad. “Now Theresa is going to come in and give you an aptitude test,” he said, taking a box out of the desk drawer. “She’ll only show you once, so watch carefully.” Inside the box, Grace could see screws and wheels and a clock face.
    When Mr. Vanderburgh left, the woman in front of Grace moved to the back of the line. Grace, who had been third, was now second. The woman in first place looked at Grace and said, “I think I left my …” and then she too went to the back of the line.
They want to go last
, Grace realized,
so they’ll have more time to learn to do it
. A slender woman in a dark blue coverall seemed to spring into the room on long legs. She wore a dark blue kerchief over her copper curls, which were the same colour as her freckles. Even her eyes were coppery. “All right, girls. Step up so you can see. I’m going to assemble the clock, starting with this piece here.” Her hands moved quickly, laying out the pieces.
    Grace remembered taking a clock apart after her mother had died, but she couldn’t remember how anything fit. She drew a long breath, and when her lungs were full, she tucked the air in and held it. Theresa picked up a small, square box and attached a screw, a spring, a wheel. She snapped them together. Another wheel, the face, the hands, the front cover, a butterfly key. When she was finished, Grace breathed out.
    “Let’s start with you,” Theresa said, pointing not at Grace but at the woman who had left her something or other at the end of the line. The others pushed closer to the table, but Grace closed her eyes and listened to the scrape and clatter of metal pieces.
    “Next,” Theresa said. Grace kept her eyes closed.
    Next, next, next.
    “Last one,” Theresa said, and Grace opened her eyes. She moved to the table and picked