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“Veda!” Her name is garbled now. Barely understandable even to my own ears.

Minutes pass.

I stop. Breathless from compressionsand sobs.

She’s gone.

My gaze catches on the nightstand. There’s a bottle of medication, empty, and two envelopes. My name scribbled across the one on top.

A brand-new realization hits as the next sob escapes my mouth: she did this.

I know without ever opening the envelope. The bottle, her farewell speech disguised as a birthday toast, the letters. What I couldn’t see last night was something I never imagined: Veda was saying goodbye because Veda was going to end it.

She knew, and the sheer weight of that combined with the fact that she’s gone crushes my chest like a semitruck driving straight into me in the middle of a highway.

“Goddamn you, Veda!” I sob, clutching her cold, twisted hand in mine and falling over so I’m lying next to her on the bed.

I need to call for help, but I know nobody can help. I just want more time. So I take it. Selfishly, I lay with her for a few minutes before I do anything. Letting my sobs pour out until they subside, holding her cold hand in mine.

Finally, I fumble for my phone. The 9-1-1 operator answers, and my voice is a detached sound. “My friend is gone,” I hear myself say, before giving the address and hanging up on the lady who’s in the middle of telling me to please stay on the line.

I have to call Bo, and that takes me to the floor next to the bed.

By the time he answers, I’ve gone from calm and detached to hysterical. Crying words that make no sense into his ear until Ifinally choke out, “It’s Gran, Bo. Come now.” I hang up on him the same as I did the operator.

Alone with my tears and Veda’s lifeless body as I sit on her bedroom floor and look at the nightstand.

The bottle.

The envelopes.

I sniff, wipe my nose with the sleeve of my sweater, and take a deep breath through a series of shallow ones. The envelopes—I pick them up. Panic, fear, and something worse than sadness burns my hands as I hold them. My name scribbled on one, Bo’s on the other.

Veda took the pills to end it, that’s crystal clear. But the envelopes, whatever they are, are too much to process now. Would the police take them? Would Bo read his before I can explain?

No.

He’s going to be devastated when he gets here. I can’t let him find out this way.

I don’t know if it’s adrenaline, sadness, guilt, or all three, but I take the letters, crawl across the floor to the doorway, and shove them in my purse. I want to read them—with Bo—not here. Not when I’m swinging between feeling everything and nothing with every minute that passes.

The quiet that follows is deep. A sad serenity. I crawl up and sit on the edge of Veda’s bed again, face soaked with tears and throat swollen with sorrow. I take her hand again in mine, handling it as though it is something delicate—like a too thin piece of potterythat might not survive a firing in the kiln. The only sound is the slow beat of my own heart in my ears.

I stare at her, sleeping but not, on her own terms. “You were a good friend, Veda,” I whisper, broken. “And I’ll never stop loving Bo.”

As if Veda timed it all, as soon as the words are out, paramedics are pounding at the door and rushing into the room, shuffling me out, gurney in tow.

“Ma’am, can you tell us what happened?” one of them asks.

It’s a blur of flashing lights, uniformed men, and me repeating the longest minutes of my life.

Now Bo is here. Grabbing me. Terrified look on his face.

I say something jumbled. Wet. Useless.

He fights to get by a paramedic and sees Veda—Gran—and drops to his knees next to the bed, her hand in his, and he leans his cheek against it.

Bo’s cries for the woman who was both Gran and Mom hurt my knees and bring me down to them.