Dead People Sell

The morning after my sister died, my phone told me she was live.

I was standing at the kitchen sink with a glass I couldn’t remember filling. Noah’s cereal was on the table. His backpack was open, and one of his socks was inside it for reasons neither of us had investigated.

Lily’s face filled the notification.

She’s back. Shop today’s picks with Lily.

I put the glass down and opened the notification.

“Okay, let me show you the sleeves,” she said.

She was wearing a pale blue blouse. I knew the blouse. She’d sent me a picture from the changing room before she wore it on camera, asking whether it made her look like a substitute teacher.

On my screen she laughed, rolled one cuff, and held her arm close to the lens. A little shopping bag in the corner opened the product page. Forty-nine dollars. Four colors. The usual delivery estimate.

I watched her touch the cuff again.

“If you’re between sizes, don’t buy two and hope. Ask me. That’s what I’m here for.”

I had seen her body the night before. There was no uncertainty about that. I wasn’t watching because I thought somebody had made a mistake at the hospital.

I was watching because she sounded like she was at work.

“Mom?”

Noah had come to the counter without his shoes.

I turned the phone over.

“Who’s talking?” he asked.

“A video.”

“Is it Aunt Lily?”

“It’s one she made before.”

He considered that. “Why are they playing it today?”

“I don’t know.”

His spoon was still in his hand. I took it and put it beside the cereal, then knelt to pull the sock out of his backpack. It was easier to do something that had a right order: sock, shoe, strap, other foot.

Evan ran operations at Horizon House Media, the company Lily worked for. That morning he’d gone ahead to Noah’s school to explain what had happened and ask about a shorter day. He was coming back to pick him up. I called before he’d had time to finish.

“They’re playing Lily,” I said.

“Where?”

“The shopping app. It says she’s live.”

“Send me the link.”

“She’s selling a blouse.”

“Claire, send it. I’ll get it stopped.”

I copied the link. My thumb missed the button twice.

On the video, Lily leaned toward the camera as if somebody had asked a question. A reply under her account name said the blouse would make a lovely gift.

My sister wasn’t answering those questions. Whoever was doing it had access to her name.

I called Horizon House Media. The number was in my contacts because I had once picked Lily up from the office after her car wouldn’t start. I knew where the side entrance was. I knew that the building’s parking lot flooded at the low end when it rained. I did not know which person had decided to leave her face on a sales screen.

The receptionist asked which department I needed.

“The one playing a dead employee’s video.”

There was a pause.

“I’m sorry. Are you calling about an order?”

“Lily Bennett. I’m her sister.”

“One moment.”

The hold music began. I carried the phone to the table and sat beside Noah. He was moving the dry pieces of cereal into a line along the rim of his bowl.

“Do I have to go?” he asked.

“Dad’s coming back to take you.”

“Can I stay with Grandpa?”

My father had barely slept. Neither had I. Yesterday, an officer had told us there was no sign of foul play. There were still forms to complete, arrangements to make, practical questions we couldn’t answer. Nothing in that conversation had explained how to make breakfast this morning.

“I’ll ask him,” I said.

I lifted the cereal bowl, and Noah caught its edge.

“I was still eating those.”

“Sorry.”

I put it back. He ate one piece, then another, watching the phone lying facedown beside my hand. I stayed in my chair instead of finding the next thing to put away.

The receptionist returned. “I’ve passed your message to production. Someone will call you.”

“The video is playing now.”

“I understand.”

“Can you put me through to someone who can stop it?”

“They’re handling it.”

I looked at the screen. A little banner said an order had just been placed. I couldn’t know everything happening behind that banner. I could see that the blouse was still available, that the button still took me to checkout, and that her account was replying as though she might come back after lunch.

I took a screenshot. Not because I had a plan. I wanted something that would still be there if somebody told me I’d misunderstood what I saw.

Evan came through the door with his phone against his ear.

“Pause the seller campaign,” he said. “Yes, this one. Don’t schedule another clip in its place.”

He set his keys on the table, listened, and looked at my screen.

“Now, Dana. We can work out the rest after it’s down.”

Lily’s mouth stopped halfway through a word. The picture disappeared, leaving a message that the session was unavailable.

I pressed the back button and opened the link again.

Unavailable.

For a few seconds I was angry with the blank screen too.

Evan ended the call and sat beside me. He didn’t reach for the phone.

“It’s stopped,” he said. “The active campaign, not every old copy people might have saved. They’ll check the account replies too.”

“They knew last night.”

“I know.”

“You told them.”

“I did.”

“Then why did I have to see it?”

“I’ll find out who left it running.”

I pushed the phone away. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I let it stay there. I needed him to know whom to call. I needed there to be a person who could say now and make somebody do something.

Noah asked if the video had broken.

Evan explained that it had been stopped because it shouldn’t have been playing that way. He said it plainly, without making Noah look at either of us for the answer.

Then he called my father. He asked whether Noah could spend the afternoon there and said he would bring lunch. My father said yes. I could hear his voice, rough with lack of sleep, asking whether Noah wanted the little oranges or the big ones.

I began to cry at that. Not when Lily’s face came up. Not when the screen went black. When my father wanted to know which oranges to buy.

Evan waited until I could speak and asked if I wanted water.

“I want her to call me,” I said.

He didn’t tell me she’d always be with us.

He moved the glass I’d left by the sink onto the table, within reach.

That afternoon, while he took Noah to my father’s, I opened Lily’s messages. There were sales links she’d sent as jokes, voice notes she recorded in traffic, a photograph of a sandwich she’d wanted me to agree was worth fourteen dollars.

I remembered one message from months earlier. I had been washing a pan while she talked, the phone balanced against the dish soap.

Claire, are you even listening?

She’d wanted to know whether she’d left her green sweater at our house. Don’t wash it with Noah’s stuff. It’ll fit him if you do.

I had laughed and said I could listen and wash something at the same time.

Now I couldn’t find that message. I scrolled too fast, went past it, started again. Every ordinary complaint or half-finished plan seemed to ask for an answer I could no longer send.

When Evan came back, he found me sitting on the floor with the charging cable across my knees.

“Dad’s keeping Noah for dinner,” he said. “We can pick him up afterward.”

“Did they tell you why it was still running?”

“The clip was in a scheduled campaign. Production hadn’t removed it. They’ve taken that campaign down.”

“And the comments under her name?”

“I’ve asked for those to stop. Dana’s checking who was replying.”

It was an explanation I could understand, although I didn’t understand how a person could hear that Lily was dead and leave her selling something until morning.

He helped me off the floor. We went to my father’s and ate food none of us particularly wanted. Noah peeled his own orange and gave me half without asking whether I was hungry.

The next day passed in calls. A funeral home asked questions I had never thought to ask Lily. Maya, her friend, asked whether she could bring photographs. My father kept saying he ought to have a list, and then forgetting where he’d put the paper.

Evan handled the calls from the company. When I thanked him, he said I didn’t have to.

At the kitchen table he opened the funeral home’s attachment while I tried to remember which photographs Dad had asked me to find. Evan turned the laptop toward me and read out the two arrangements we could afford. He waited while I changed my mind about one. I was relieved to have him there; I could barely keep a question in my head long enough to answer it.

That evening another notification arrived.

This one wasn’t an old sales clip.

Lily’s photograph sat between tall arrangements of white flowers. Across the top of the invitation were the words Remembering Lily. The session had started nine minutes earlier.

I opened it.

A woman in a cream jacket stood beside the flowers with one of Lily’s photographs behind her. She held up a blouse in both hands.

“So many of you have asked how to show what Lily meant to you,” she said. “Tonight, we can share the things she loved.”

A buy button appeared under the flowers.

I sat down slowly. The product was the same blouse, in another color.

I typed: I’m Lily’s sister. Our family hasn’t agreed to this. Please stop using her to sell clothes.

My comment appeared, then disappeared.

I typed it again.

Around it, people were asking about sizes and whether orders would arrive in time for the weekend. The host thanked someone for “being part of this goodbye.” A short clip of Lily filled the screen. She smiled and held the blue cuff toward the lens.

My second comment disappeared too.

Evan was in the hallway speaking to the funeral home. I went to him and waited until he ended the call.

“They didn’t forget this one,” I said, holding out the phone. “They put the flowers there.”

He watched long enough to see the shopping link and the clip. Then he called Dana. The call went to voicemail. He tried again, left a message telling her to end the session, and sent the same instruction by text. On my screen, the host kept speaking beside the flowers.

“Get your shoes,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

I called my father to make sure Noah could stay a little longer. I saved the new screenshot. Then I put my phone and keys into the same bag I’d taken to the hospital.

I wanted to hear my sister’s voice. I didn’t want a blouse to be the price of hearing it.