I met Death a few days after I found my cousin’s putrefied body at his house. Bloated and yellowed. A cocktail of odors: rotten eggs, decaying cabbage, pungent garlic.
It was about then that I decided to go back to Nadia.
After his divorce, my cousin Cyrus lived alone and had only sporadic relationships. So, he had it coming—this sort of lonely death—though not at forty-seven. Since we were young, I looked up to him not only because he was three years my senior but also because he excelled at everything: math, sports, cars, girls. Several people told me, in neutral or hostile observation, that I followed his path, and there’s some truth to it. I immigrated from Iran to Canada a year after him. Then I broke up with Nadia once Cyrus finalized his divorce five years ago. In retrospect, I only found my relationship stifling when Cyrus confided in me about his broken marriage. Yes, it had been five years since the last time Nadia and I held hands, and I still fantasized about winning her back.
***
When Cyrus’s father called, I was in the editing room at work, cutting and pasting the scenes of a TV series, another iteration of the familiar storyline about a virus, zombies, and a blockaded city. My cousin wasn’t answering his parents’ texts and calls. “Very untypical of him, Amir,” my uncle said, the static of a noisy long-distance call emphasizing the urgency in his voice. I rushed to Cyrus’s house and, as instructed, dug for his spare key in a potted plant by the front door.
I found Cyrus on a round rug next to a footstool. Congealed coffee spattered the parquet and his shirt—maybe his face, too. Hard to tell when the left side of his face caved into rot. A half-eaten sesame bagel on the island anchored the time of death to morning. The police didn’t rule out foul play or suicide, but the medical verdict that came later was conclusive. According to the autopsy report, my cousin died of a brain aneurysm, his body left in the open for at least nine days.
Nine fucking days!
My life wasn’t the same after that. At the supermarket, my stomach turned at the sight of masticated flesh, the skinned pigs and plucked chickens. Any smell as remote as freshly cut grass made me gasp. I couldn’t forget the aftertaste of curdled milk. I saw death and decay everywhere.
***
My uncle kept silent on the phone through my explanation. If not for his strangled sound at the end, I’d have thought the line was cut. I imagined his gaunt face and feeble body receiving what must have been the worst news of his life. A retired philosopher seeking consolation in the words of the thinkers before him. Then, I pictured my own mother hearing the news of my death under the same circumstances—thousands of kilometers away, feasted upon by insects. This, a few years after she found my father dead in their bed. Granted, I might’ve been predisposed. But no one wants to die in their solitude, do they? I wanted more than maggots and bacteria as company when I died.
While I helped my grieving uncle and his wife fly to Toronto, as I phoned for the death certificate needed to transport the body to Iran, I ruminated about my own death and how to postpone it. I filled my pantry with vitamins and supplements. I drank a liter of water every day. I cut down on alcohol. I urged my family doctor to perform all possible checkups for my age.
“Why the rush?” she asked.
“I don’t want to die alone.”
“You can’t work on the alone part in my office,” she joked as she signed for blood and urine tests.
***
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought of fixing the alone part myself. But between finding a serious partner and deferring death, the latter sounded more practical, less of a hassle. Years of casual encounters made it harder to keep women around long-term. But with the proximity of death on the horizon, I asked myself, Who would be by my side if I stopped breathing? It’s like musical chairs. Life might stop while you’re looking for a chair. Or you can cheat and sit glued to a chair. Static. Stationary. Boring, but resting your ass on fluff till you die. It all boils down to which one comes first. Running out of love or life?
The day after Cyrus’s death, I figured I needed to tell Nadia. After all, she’d spent hours at his Gatsby-like parties even though he was never her favorite. At the end, I figured she wouldn’t care after so many years, but the mere thought of contacting her was enough to resurface memories. Her teary face while packing. The last glance. The goodbyes never said. I counted all the ways our relationship could reboot, rekindle. We weren’t total strangers, yet we’d probably changed enough. She was safe, familiar. How bad could it be? With some luck, we could even make something exhilarating.
Nadia had no social media presence. Since we’d split, I’d learned useless tidbits about her life—her cropped hair or tanned skin—through scrolling her friend’s Instagram page. Nadia was Roya’s maid of honor. Had Nadia and I gotten married, Roya would’ve reciprocated the role. However, Roya’s Instagram page recently converted into an exclusive chapel to worship her little daughter, Dorsa, at the expense of others, including Nadia.
I didn’t have the guts to directly contact Nadia. People change a lot in the span of five years. What would she be doing when I called her? An ultrasound to find out the sex of her baby? A sweaty threesome after a line of coke? Time could turn someone into a stranger.
Instead, I invited Roya and her husband Majid to brunch. When I arrived at the restaurant, I caught them in the middle of a squabble that subsided once Majid spotted me. They sat across from each other with Dorsa between, fastened in her high chair. Majid’s t-shirt was so crumpled I wondered if he’d slept in it. In her crimson romper, Roya was dressed better. However, once she pulled from our hug, I noticed an archipelago of stains under her collar. One step better than Majid, multiple steps worse than her older self.
I ran the back of my finger over Dorsa’s cheek. “She’s adorable.”
“Oh man, you’re lucky you don’t have kids. They’re disasters,” Majid said.
Roya slapped the back of his hand half-seriously. “What a horrible thing to say.”
The baby insisted I take her spoon before she reached for it again. “No, that’s fine,” I said when they tried to herd her away. “I love other people’s children.”
Refusing to have my own children was my ostensible reason for breaking up with Nadia. When our momentum fizzled, I sought a plausible way out. We hadn’t talked much about whether we wanted children, so when I saw her look wistfully at the boisterous kids zipping by at a birthday party for a friend’s toddler, I found my opportunity.
“Oh God, that was crazy. I’m happy I don’t want children,” I said on the way home.
Nadia turned to me so fast her seatbelt squealed. “Since when are you so sure?”
Her surprise was justified. I’d never shared my resolve. By the time we arrived home, Nadia was devastated. She was thirty-three, still had time, but she didn’t want to stay in a relationship that wouldn’t lead to the life she envisioned. I enumerated all the titular arguments against having kids: global warming, war, Trump, career growth, personal freedom, the dark web, etc. Nowadays, it’s harder to justify wanting kids than not.
“What’s new with you?” Majid wiggled his fingers in faux remembering. “Your stamp collection. How’s that going?”
“Gone. My unit flooded last year.” Collecting stamps was a hobby I inherited from Cyrus. The water destroyed my expensive suits, some furniture, and the stamps. The insurance paid me 13,000 dollars. I replaced everything else but gave up collecting.
“Oh man, those were beautiful,” Majid said, dispirited.
“Yeah, I enjoyed them. I was sad to see them go.” Without preamble, I cut to the chase. “How’s Nadia, by the way?”
Roya and Majid exchanged glances before Roya announced, “Her wedding’s in three months.”
The baby banged her spoon on a tray, and I fantasized about throwing it out the window. “Nadia’s getting married?”
***
I wandered the streets for hours to avoid facing an apartment that felt emptier and smaller now that I knew Nadia was a lost cause. A Caddy hearse was parked illegally in front of my building when I got home at dusk. I tried to remember if any morgues were nearby but came up blank.
In my quiet home, I downed a brimming tumbler of whisky, after which I became reckless and self-deprecating enough to send a text to Nadia: Hey you.
It would’ve made Cyrus mad, such an impulsive act. Never put yourself in a vulnerable position, he’d argue. I gazed at the screen until Nadia saw my message. Those three damned blinking dots showed her typing a response—and nothing, as if she decided against a conversation. I was filled with frustration, self-pity, and rage. I paced the living room, lay on the bed, then continued zigzagging. I needed company, someone to kill the silence, a distraction. One perk of being perpetually single is knowing a tapestry of women, some of whom can make time for a glass of wine, a subtitled film, and unencumbered sex.
I snipped out a message and waited for a response before texting the next person. The first woman was at a destination wedding somewhere in the Caribbean, the second didn’t respond, the third was more interested in an anesthetist with whom she’d been on two dates. But the fourth, Olivia, sounded chirpy in her voice message: “Perfect timing. John’s about to pick up Nick. You still live in that apartment on Eglinton, right?”
I’d never met her son. In the beginning, Olivia graciously accepted my lack of interest, or so she’d pretended. Finally, our relationship ended by mutual agreement. She was looking for someone who’d stick around, and I thought she was too short, which isn’t normally a deal-breaker, but when you’re needlessly nitpicky, even Marilyn Monroe’s mole becomes a problem.
I told myself this would be my last act of promiscuity. Last drag of smoke before quitting. I’d be clean afterwards, ready for a serious commitment.
Olivia offered a bottle of Chardonnay in the doorway. Without waiting for my invite, she brushed past me and dug through her purse before tossing it on the island. “For your album,” she said, handing me a glassine envelope. I found a sheet of stamps inside. Six yellow butterflies.
“You remembered,” I said, not mentioning the flood.
Olivia found my corkscrew in a drawer on her first attempt. “Stamps are Nick’s latest obsession. He’s that age, you know.” She said you know as if I’d raised a few kids already. She struggled with the cork and let out a happy whoop when it popped. “Last month, for his eighth birthday, I took him to DC and bought him some stamps. Turns out he already had that sheet. So, when you called, I asked if I could gift these to a friend.” She shrugged.
I used a paper towel to clean dust from two wine glasses. “Thanks. That was considerate.”
We slumped into the loveseat, each holding a glass of wine by the stem and gazing at CNN’s coverage of the latest US mass shooting. No romantic music playing, no candle burning. Not my typical one-night-stand setup.
“Are we going to fuck?” Olivia asked, holding her gaze on the screen before flicking her eyes to me. She took a sip of her wine and placed the glass on the table. Her tone didn’t speak of an eventuality. It was an impatient query about the present. I rummaged my memory, trying to reconstruct her out of the palimpsest of women I’d been with. No, she wasn’t the type to jump into bed without enough prelude. She referred to sex as making love. On the rare cases she said fuck, she prefixed it with pardon my French. The first time we fucked, she asked me to turn off the light. Now, I was at a loss to stitch these characters together.
When I hesitated, she removed her scrunchie, letting her hair fall over her shoulders. My whole body flushed warm.
“Do you want to take it to bed?” I asked, breath heavy.
She shook her head before pulling up her blouse. I’d forgotten the birthmark under the swell of her left breast. The minimal tattoo of a black anchor on her side. The horizontal scar from the C-section. Apparently, she knew her way around my house better than I knew her body. Bodies can tell stories. Too bad they morph into horrible blobs in no time, the fluids rushing to leak out of the body. A treat for bacteria. And then the bloating. The change of color, skin going orange.
Olivia’s skin was sensitive to the sun, evidenced by the contrast between the imprint of her bra and the rest of her skin. She bit my lip. I opened my mouth, inviting her tongue. Then I licked her ear, and she breathed into mine. Orifices are where flies swarm to lay eggs. Eyes, ears, mouth, nose.
Our eyes locked as Olivia rode me, her hair pushed to one side. Her moans rose in sync with my own. I tried to focus on the moment, on the living, on the pleasures of being alive. But it was too late. Something inside me changed. Shrunk. Shriveled. She threw herself on my arms, letting out a sigh.
“What happened?” she murmured.
I looped my hands around her, gripping her whole body, our breathing the only sound in the room. The third stage of decomposition is called purge. The bloating is relieved. Gas and liquids ooze out. Dark fluid pools around the cadaver. I stroked Olivia’s cheek where a thin film of sweat pooled.
The mute TV broadcasted the aftermath of an earthquake. Bodies lying under blankets, feet upright. The concaved head of a doll.
“Can I take a shower before leaving?” Olivia whispered in my ear.
I mumbled, “Okay,” and squinted at the unfinished bottle of Chardonnay.
***
Three years after his divorce, Cyrus moved to the house he’d die in. On the day he received the key, he brought a few items that were too fragile or precious to leave at the mercy of the movers: plants, paintings, and, of course, his stamp albums. I loaned him my car and helped him tear Bubble Wrap off the paintings. His girlfriend at the time was supposed to join us that evening.
“Bea will bring the champagne,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty house.
I placed his snake plant on the counter and tried to right a few slanted leaves. “Is she the one?” I asked. Their courtship was three months old and had survived Cyrus’s tumultuous move, so I was curious.
“The one, huh?” He chuckled, then went back to the car and returned with five albums. He lay them next to the snake plant and wiped sweat from his forehead. “She’s nice, but I’m not the soulmate type.” He paused to catch his breath. “Where’s your soulmate?”
I rifled through one of the albums to hide my blushing. “Oh man, it’s hard to find the perfect one.”
“Perfection is like chasing the horizon, as they say.” Cyrus flicked my hand when he noticed me absentmindedly playing with an old stamp. “Hey, hey. Be careful. I paid 540 dollars plus tax for it just last month.”
I had no idea Cyrus was so invested in his hobby. The stamps I bought rarely valued beyond ten or so dollars. I squinted at the stamp in question. “For this?” It was plain with a bell on it. Its nominal price was twenty-five units of an unknown currency.
Unconvinced that I wouldn’t damage his precious acquisition, he claimed back the album and ceremoniously closed it. “Do you know what makes a stamp so precious? What makes a sixty-cent stamp worth over a million?”
I shook my head, a bit hurt.
“The imperfection,” he explained. “The print malfunction makes it stand out among the crowd. The imperfection is unique.”
***
An ambulance siren woke me. When I turned in bed to check the time, I found a figure a few meters away in the rocking chair. I rubbed my eyes, blinked, and blinked again. It wasn’t a trick of the shadows. I switched on the nightstand lamp. The light was dim but enough to recognize the outlines of a woman in a white robe.
I tried calling 911, but my fingers were numb with fear and slipped on the screen.
The woman was petite, even pretty—long hair pushed to the side, miniature face. Not your typical intruder wearing an undershirt, exposing arms as thick as an oak branch, but still creepy enough that I had difficulty turning my tongue.
“Who’re you?” I finally managed.
“Death.” Her soothing voice crippled me, pinning me to the bed. I wondered if that was why people didn’t escape Death when their time came.
I lifted myself on my elbows. “Like Death in The Seventh Seal?” That was the only Death figure I remembered—that morose man in an ominous black cloak.
“Another manifestation.”
“You’re too beautiful to take lives,” I said, surprising myself with my recklessness. She didn’t respond, and I had no intention of testing Death’s patience. “Can’t you at least put me in the fridge when you’re done?”
“It’s not your turn. Not yet.” She rocked back and forth, the chair squeaking beneath her weight. “You’re so obsessed with me, I was curious to meet you. Not even nonagenarians think about dying as often as you.”
“I’m not obsessed. I just don’t want us to meet when I’m alone.”
“You won’t be around. Why would that matter?” she asked pensively.
“I don’t want to be a nuisance. I don’t want someone to find me, you know, bloated and stinky.”
“Well, my experience shows there’s no guarantee anyone can avoid dying alone. Last Tuesday, at 9:08 p.m., I expired a sweet family man on his work trip. He cooked for three days with a do not disturb sign on the hotel door before a maid found him.”
“That’s an outlier, isn’t it? You’ve got lots of opportunities to find me alone, skulk behind me, and squeeze out my soul.”
Her silent nod was a chilling confirmation.
“Is it—” I cleared my throat. “Is it possible to warn me before my time comes?”
She paused, then leaned forward, extending her hand. “Give me your cellphone. I want to install an app.”
“I can do it myself,” I said. It wasn’t every day you passed your phone to Death.
She held out her hand impatiently. “You need divine access.” She seized the phone, and her fingers moved swiftly on the display. “This app will tell you if you have less than an hour to live.”
***
In the morning, I laughed at my dream before dragging myself out of bed and making coffee. When I swiped my phone open, a new icon nestled on the screen: DeathCounter. I dropped the phone. I looked around, expecting the strange woman to appear, lurking in a corner. I slid down the wall, pulled my knees to my chest, and checked the icon again—a tombstone inside a slot machine.
I clicked the tombstone, swallowing. A text in large font with a green background appeared: “Congratulations! You’ll be alive for at least the next 59:56 minutes.” And the seconds ticked down. On the bottom right was a refresh button. When I pressed it, the counter reset to one hour. There was no easy way to test its truth unless I wanted to jump off the CN Tower or throw myself under an eighteen-wheeler.
I kept the app secret. I didn’t want to mess with Death.
***
I soon developed a burning addiction to DeathCounter and checked compulsively. When I drove, I opened the app at red lights. Sometimes, I couldn’t wait and pulled over. At night, I set timers fifty-five minutes apart, figuring that, worst-case scenario, I’d know five minutes before my death. Then, I stopped sleeping altogether until my eyes closed on their own, only to snap open when my next alarm sounded. I drifted in and out, a swimmer’s head submerging and surfacing. At first, I wondered if the lack of sleep would bring my natural death closer. After a few days, I lost the ability to think straight.
When I reached out to Olivia again, I couldn’t formulate my exact reason for doing so. I knew I wanted to sleep next to her, to be in her arms for a good stretch of time. If I died, she’d know by morning, and I wouldn’t be alone. A single night with no alarms.
She sounded surprised. “I was expecting your call in four years. Not four days.”
“I miss you,” the insomniac in me mumbled.
Her laughter spilled into the phone. “I’d like to see you, too. But I have Nick with me. How about this weekend?”
I resisted the gravity of my eyelids. “Bring Nick. I have a sofa bed.”
***
When I made a grocery run, I dropped a couple candy bars and some chips in my shopping cart next to the Gouda and olives.
A last-second decision, I turned toward Cyrus’s house instead of my own. His parents were still in town, sorting his belongings. My uncle opened the door and said he was happy to see me, but his grief-stricken face didn’t match the platitude.
“Can I borrow Cyrus’s stamp albums?” I asked.
“Of course, but I don’t know where they are. Come on in and look.” He stepped aside.
In Cyrus’s house, my stomach churned, and I gagged even though faint lavender and cedar replaced the stench. The rug where I found Cyrus was gone. I wondered if it was rolled up, shipped back to Iran, or lying in a trash heap somewhere. I wanted to ask if they’d decided to sell the house, but it wasn’t the time.
I found Cyrus’s stamp collection arranged neatly in a corner of his bedroom closet.
When I turned, I was startled to see my uncle leaning on the wall. “Did you find the albums?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered, leaning on the wall to balance my heavy load.
“Do you know what Baudrillard says about the act of collecting?” My uncle threw out the name as if Baudrillard were his old pal. I shook my head. “He says it’s a way to control our own powerlessness and mortality.” Whatever he saw in my face made him shift his tone. “Well, it obviously gives us joy and satisfaction, too.”
After a few awkward seconds, I nodded. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”
He followed me to the door and patted my back. “It’s yours. A token from your departed cousin.”
***
Four of us had gathered around a sheet cake on Cyrus’s fortieth birthday. He and his wife Lara. Nadia and me. He blew out the candles. A four and a zero. The former skewed and leaned on the latter. Our clapping made modest noise. Out of tune.
“Did you make a wish?” Nadia asked.
“The older you get, the more your ambitions die down, settling on boring things. Like health,” he said.
“Or maybe you realize health is more important,” I offered.
“You know, when you reach middle age, you open your eyes and see you haven’t achieved what you were slated to.” Cyrus gestured to me. “You can attest to that, right? Sitting in that claustrophobic studio and bringing somebody else’s vision to life?”
Nadia giggled like she always did when she was nervous. “Don’t say that, Cyrus. You know he might quit his job tomorrow if you get in his head.”
I had asked her before not to joke about my job in front of Cyrus. “Some people think editing is an art of its own.”
“Of course,” Cyrus said, unimpressed. “But the middle-age tragedy isn’t that. It’s the realization that you’re just mediocre, not the elite luminary you thought you’d become.”
In her overused acerbic tone, Lara added, “The sad realization that all you got is a wife.”
“I wouldn’t say sad, but some realization, nonetheless.”
His next birthday, Lara was out of the picture. The one after that, it was only me and Cyrus in a bar, eyeing women in high heels and short dresses.
***
At home, I folded out the sofa bed to make sure it was clean and sturdy. When Olivia knocked, I opened the door, wearing my kindest smile.
Again, she had a Chardonnay in her hand. And she was alone.
“Where’s Nick?” I asked, deflated.
“Sleepover at his friend’s. It didn’t feel right to bring him tonight, you know? It’d have been confusing.”
“I was looking forward to meeting him.”
She kissed my cheek. “We’ll do something later. The three of us.” She cupped her hand under my chin. I figured it was a prelude to a kiss. I was wrong. “You look weird. When was the last time you slept?”
She followed me to the kitchen and gave me a hand with preparing appetizers. “The other night—what made you call after so many years?” she asked as she painstakingly rolled cold cuts on a plate.
“I needed company.”
She nodded as if I’d presented the most cogent response. “How many women said no before you settled for me?” She patted my chest when I opened my mouth to argue. “Remember, my favorite thing about you is your honesty, even when I don’t like it.”
“You were the fourth,” I said. “How bad is that?”
“Depends on the total count.”
I curled my arm around her waist and pulled her toward me. “It doesn’t matter. All those names are crossed out,” I said as I kissed her.
***
A phone alert woke me up. I was curled around Olivia, and I had to struggle to turn around and reach for my phone. It was a text from the woman in the Caribbean: I’m back, where’s the party? As I swiped to turn off the sound, I received a message from the second woman, the one who’d left my text unanswered: Sorry, just saw your message. What’s up? And lastly, a picture came from the one who was dating the anesthetist, waist up, topless, smirking.
“Tempting, huh?”
Death’s voice, coming from the rocking chair. She wore a long red dress tonight, cut right above her ankles.
I turned to Olivia, afraid she might’ve woken up, afraid of what she’d think if she saw another woman in the bedroom.
“Don’t worry about her,” Death said, one degree louder. “How do you like the app?”
“One hour is too short a notice. What if I die in my sleep?”
“That was the best deal I could get you.”
I showed my screen to her. “If the app is right, you shouldn’t be here.”
She inhaled and glanced at Olivia. “I’m not here for you.”
I scooted myself upright. Olivia lay on her belly, the blanket covering her body halfway up her back. Wavy hair buried her face. No soft rise and fall of her back. She wasn’t breathing.
“No,” I said, raising my voice, somehow hoping it’d resurrect Olivia. I remembered a flash of last night. “She wanted to leave, and I asked her to stay. This is on me. No. No, you can’t take her. Not now. Not here.”
I leaped over Olivia and landed on the floor beside the bed. I pulled away the blanket and shook her shoulders. She was stiff, lifeless.
I scowled at Death. “You can’t do this.”
She rocked in the chair, a smile forming. I lunged at her, seized her neck with both hands. The chair toppled, and we collapsed on the floor.
“Bring her back,” I shouted, tightening my grip.
I looked at Olivia, hoping to see some life in her. Nothing. The black anchor inert on her side. I hauled Death to the balcony, the tip of her hair touching the withered begonias. She didn’t resist, her limbs jiggling like those of a rag doll. Surprised by my own strength, I lifted Death’s body over the railing and let go of her. The thud of denting metal echoed among the apartment buildings. She’d landed on the hearse roof, the car’s headlights wavering and flickering off.
I smelled coffee.
***
Glasses clinked on the dishwasher tray. Plates slid in. The dishwasher door clicked shut. I was in bed alone. The green dress Olivia wore last night draped over the rocking chair.
“Olivia?” I called out.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, her voice trailing from the kitchen.
I scrambled out of bed, stepped onto the balcony, and looked down. The hearse was gone. Olivia’s feet pattered on the carpet. She carried two mugs, my Pink Floyd t-shirt falling to her knees.
She peered at the begonias as she handed me a mug. “You should water these.”
I pulled her to my chest so tight one of us could’ve spilled the coffee.
“I’m happy to see you,” I said, swallowing back alive at the end, “Olivia.”
She punched my chest lightheartedly. “Don’t be so dramatic.” She folded her arms. “It’s chilly out here.”
She sauntered back inside, oblivious to how happy I truly was to see her. Happiness! So hard to achieve and yet, once you attain it, you have to worry about losing it to death. It’s like waiting in line to get into your favorite restaurant with a glamorous patio, and, when your turn comes, you’re told you only have one hour to enjoy.
One hour. That damned chunk of time was disrupting my life’s continuity. Life would be easier without it, I decided. I strode inside and picked up my phone, held my finger on the DeathCounter icon, and pressed Uninstall. I received an error: You need divine access.
Another attempt. Same error.
My phone vibrated. I was electrified to see Nadia’s message: you missed me? No emoji or other context. It could be sarcastic, flirtatious, or intentionally ambivalent.
Olivia sat at my cluttered desk, leisurely examining my belongings. She thumbed through one of Cyrus’s albums.
I threw the phone on the bed, not responding. “I was hoping to show them to Nick.”
“He’d be ecstatic to see his gift in here,” she said.
I slapped my forehead, harder than a mere gesture. “I totally forgot about it.” I pulled out the upper drawer. “Let’s put it in now.”
Olivia leafed through the pages until she found a blank one. I inserted the stamps in the slot. Six identical butterflies, wings wide and open and yellow.