Excerpt from Bright Objects by Ruby Todd, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Because the time we had to plan the event was in no way relative to its grandeur—which seemed set to rival the send-off of King George VI—it was surprising how often Joseph would lapse unprompted into ruminations about floral symbolism or the transmigration of souls, just at the point when he needed to finalize his choice of rose spray or casket. At times when he spoke, his palms would float upward, like a saint presiding over a scene in which Clarence and I were the fallen.

I had seen it before of course, and it was natural, this seizing of the dead one's funeral—with all its potential intricacy and pomp, to plan and to stage—as a means of sublimating the freshness of grief. Dead bodies can only be held in cool storage for so long, and it's terrible, really, how quickly a service must be held. For grief is a kind of rational madness, and new grief an alien planet, and it is not therapeutic for all in its exile to be faced with the finer decisions of commemorative slideshows and casket sateens. The funeral of Patricia Evans, it was clear, was not just a means of distraction for Joseph, but an event burdened with the significance of a final gesture, a monument to his love and grief.

On the January afternoon I'll mark as the beginning—although as always there were other beginnings, casting their cells into this one and declaring themselves only later—Joseph arrived for his first appointment an hour early, with a furtive-looking young brunette in tow. He stood at reception in a white oxford shirt and chinos, with what appeared to be a shark's tooth on a cord around his throat, wearing a look of patient expectation. When, at the sound of the bell, I emerged from the storeroom, he summoned a smile and with a rueful sigh glanced at my name tag.

"Ah, hello, Sylvia," he said, his voice mellifluous and warm, as though I were an old friend. His large eyes were almost a true cornflower blue, more striking for the fact that his skin—owing to the shock of loss, I supposed—had acquired a grayish pallor. As his gaze ranged around the room and the noonday sun lit his silver-blond ponytail, I noticed that even in obvious grief, his face had a childlike openness, as though the wonders and torments of life were still striking him as new.

"You're a picture—like something out of a noir film, at this old desk," he said a little nostalgically, before introducing himself and noting that he'd spoken with Clarence on the phone.

Patricia had been dead for only forty-eight hours, but as Joseph began explaining when Clarence appeared, it was especially important to decide on musical arrangements. Due to his appreciation for Clarence's professional input, Joseph had invited his friend Zara, a trained soprano, to trial some recessional songs during their meeting in his office, and had taken the liberty of arriving early, to ensure there was time enough afterward to discuss the flowers.

Even before Joseph's interruption, the day had been destined for chaos. Clarence had already held three consults with newly bereaved families without a break, workmen were laying new carpet in the Serenity Chapel, and I had just returned, clammy and flushed, after finding myself in a broken-down hearse among the wheat fields out of town, with the new apprentice and a casketed corpse due for post-funeral delivery at the local crematorium. Having coordinated a solution that involved hitching a ride back to Bell's with a truck driver and delivering the corpse in the company van without a moment to spare, I'd then had to soothe the nerves of Clarence's daughter, Tania, our mortician. She was red-faced with agitation at a delayed order of cavity fluid, despite having spent the morning in the tranquility of a cool mortuary basement with no one alive to harass or detain her.

I was still catching my breath at reception when the stranger appeared.

Excerpted from Bright Objects by Ruby Todd. Copyright © 2024 by Ruby Todd. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.