Excerpt from The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Grief plays tricks on you that way—a familiar whiff of cologne or a potential sighting of your person in a crowd, and all the knots you've tied inside yourself to manage the pain of losing them suddenly unravel.

Warming my hands around a steaming cup of Earl Grey, I stood in front of my bookshelves, which were packed tightly with Grandpa's biology textbooks, musty atlases, and sea-faring novels. Wedged in between them, three dilapidated notebooks stood out, not so much for their appearance, but for the single word inscribed on the spine of each. On the first, REGRETS; the second, ADVICE; the third, CONFESSIONS. Aside from my pets, these were the things I'd save in a fire.

Ever since I started working as a death doula, I'd had the same ritual, documenting each client's final words before the breath had left their body. Over the years, I'd found that people often felt the need to say something as they were dying, something of significance—as if they realized it was their last chance to leave a mark on the world. Usually those last messages fit into one of three categories: things they'd wish they'd done differently, things they'd learned along the way, or secrets they'd kept that they were finally ready to reveal. Collecting these words felt like my sacred duty, especially when I was the only other person in the room. And even when I wasn't, family members were usually too consumed with grief to think about writing down such things. My emotions, on the other hand, were always neatly tucked away.

Setting my tea aside, I stretched on tiptoes to retrieve the book titled CONFESSIONS. It'd been a while since I'd been able to make an entry in this one. Lately, it seemed like everyone had reached the end of their lives with regrets.

I nestled into the sofa and flipped through the leather-bound notebook to a clean page. In my compact scrawl, I inscribed Guillermo's name, address, the day's date, and his confession. I hadn't expected it, to be honest—I'd sensed him slipping away and thought he was already unconscious. But then his eyes opened and he put his hand on my arm. Not dramatically, but lightly, as if he'd been on his way out the door and had forgotten to tell me something.

"I accidentally killed my little sister's hamster when I was eleven," he whispered. "I left the door of its cage open to annoy her and then it went missing. We found it three days later wedged between the sofa cushions."

As soon as the words departed his lips, his body relaxed with serene weightlessness, like he was floating on his back in a swimming pool.

Then he was gone.

* * *

I couldn't help thinking about that hamster as my own pets gathered around me on the sofa that evening. George, the chubby bulldog I'd found six years ago burrowing through the trash cans downstairs, rested his wet chin on my knee. Lola and Lionel, the tabby siblings I'd rescued as kittens from a box left outside the church on Carmine Street, took turns slinking figure eights around my ankles. The silkiness of their fur soothed me.

I tried not to imagine whether the hamster had suffered. They were pretty feeble creatures, so it probably hadn't taken much. Poor Guillermo, carrying that guilt with him for fifty years.

I glanced at my phone, balanced on the faded sofa arm. The only time it ever rang—aside from robocalls about car insurance and fake IRS audits—was when someone wanted to hire me. Socializing was a skill I'd never really mastered. When you're an only child raised by your introverted grandfather, you learn to appreciate your own company. It wasn't that I was opposed to the idea of friendship; it's just that if you don't get close to anyone, you can't lose them. And I'd already lost enough people.

Still, sometimes I wondered how I got to this point: thirty-six years old and my whole life revolved around waiting for strangers to die.

Excerpted from The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brammer. Copyright © 2023 by Mikki Brammer. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.