Page 37

HARPER

My mom dies on March 3rd at 2:47 a.m., which is—coincidentally, cruelly—the exact hour I was born. 53 years old, she passed away in her sleep.

I wasn't with her when it happened.

I was asleep.

But something in me knew. I swear to God, something in me just knew. I sat bolt upright in the dark, heart pounding like it was trying to outrun a truth I hadn't heard yet. My breath caught in my throat and I stared into the shadowy corners of the hotel room, waiting for the reason to hit me.

Ten minutes later, the hospital called.

I think I already knew before I answered. Maybe I knew the second she exhaled for the last time. Maybe I felt it. Maybe there's a string between us that snapped—quietly, in the dark—and woke me up with the sound of its breaking.

The rest is a blur. I remember Millie waking up, her hand on my back, her voice whispering my name.

I remember pressing the phone to my ear and nodding, nodding, nodding, because what else could I do?

I remember dropping it, the receiver dangling off the edge of the bed, the words still coming through, the nurse still talking.

"She passed peacefully," they said.

"She wasn't in pain."

"She went in her sleep."

Peacefully. I hate that word now. Because peaceful doesn't mean painless. It doesn't mean fair. It doesn't mean ready. I wasn't ready. She wasn't ready. There's no such thing as peaceful when you're fifty-three years old and leaving behind a daughter you still call your baby.

I think Millie said my name again. I think I told her. I don't know how. I don't remember how the words left my mouth, or how I said my mom is dead without shattering into pieces that couldn't be gathered again.

I don't know how I'm still breathing. Maybe I'm not.

The morning light in Florida is too warm.

It feels offensive. There's no snow. No rain.

Just sun rising over the Gulf like nothing happened.

Like the world isn't quieter now. Like my mom didn't die in a hospital bed just a few miles away from where I'm lying in a hotel room I didn't choose, beside a girl who's pretending not to be breaking too.

Because Millie is breaking. I can see it.

She tries to hold it together for me—she always does—but I've seen the way she keeps touching her phone, the way she stares at the ceiling when she thinks I'm not watching.

I think she's imagining what it would be like to lose her moms. To get a call in the middle of the night that her world is over.

She hasn't said it, but I know.

She's scared too. She's hurting. And she's still here.

Millie hasn't let go of me since the moment that call came in. Not when I collapsed on the floor. Not when I tried to stand and couldn't. Not when I sobbed into the hollow of her throat and whispered, "She's gone, she's gone, she's gone," until my voice was raw.

She held me through it all.

She's still holding me now. I don't know how to say thank you when the words feel so small. I don't know how to say I don't deserve this without sounding like I'm pushing her away. Because I don't want her to go. I want her here. I want her so badly it hurts.

But I also want my mom. I want one more day. One more hour. One more phone call where she tells me to eat something and that she's proud of me even when I mess up. I want her to brush my hair. I want her to tell me everything's going to be okay, even if it's a lie.

I want her back.

God, I want her back. Please.

It was always just me and her. There's no big family flying in. No cousins bringing casseroles. No long-lost aunts booking flights to say goodbye. No one to sit in a church pew and cry for her but me.

And Millie.

Just me and Millie.

I sit on the edge of the hotel bed with the paperwork in my lap.

A folder the hospital gave me. Her death certificate is in there.

Her death certificate. It has her name typed neatly at the top—first, middle, last—and then the date.

March 3rd. A single sheet of paper that says she was here, and now she's not.

Like that's all it takes to erase a person.

One page. A cause of death. A time. Some official seal in the corner.

I can't even cry. Not right now. I did that already—loud and messy and curled into myself until my ribs ached.

I feel like there's nothing left in me but dust.

Like all the crying in the world won't bring her back, and maybe if I stop crying, I can pretend she's still here.

Just somewhere else. Just not picking up the phone. Just sleeping.

"Harper." Millie's voice is soft, coming from behind me.

I don't turn around. I can't. "They said I have to choose what to do. Cremation. Or a burial. But I can't—I can't even remember if she ever told me what she wanted. How do I not know that? How do I not know what she wanted me to do with her body?"

There's a pause. I hear her move, the shift of the bed, and then her arms are around me from behind—slow, careful, but solid. Real. Her chin rests on my shoulder, and I feel her breath against my skin.

"She knew you loved her," she whispers. "That's what matters."

"I should've come sooner."

"You came when it mattered most."

I close my eyes and lean back into her. The tears return without warning, slipping down my cheeks silently. I let them fall. I let them fall because I don't know how else to keep going.

"It's not fair," I whisper.

"No," she agrees, and her voice cracks. "It's not."

I feel her cry, too. Behind me. Quietly.

Like she doesn't want me to hear, but I do. And it breaks something in me, all over again.

"I'm so tired," I say. "I don't even know how to be a person without her.

It's always been her and me. Since I was born.

She raised me by herself. She did everything for me.

She taught me how to ride a bike, how to braid my hair, how to take care of myself.

She stayed up with me when I had the flu.

She made pancakes every Saturday. She was mine.

And now she's gone, and I don't know who I am without her. "

"You're still you," Millie says, and her arms tighten around me like she's trying to hold me together. "You're the girl she loved more than anything. The one she was proud of. The one she told to be brave."

I nod, even though it hurts. Even though bravery feels impossible. Millie kisses the top of my shoulder, soft and hesitant, like she's not sure if it's okay. I let her. I lean into it. Into her. Because the only reason I'm not screaming into a pillow right now is her.

"Will you help me plan it?" I ask. "The funeral. Or—or whatever it's going to be."

"Of course I will."

I finally turn to face her. Her cheeks are wet, too. And when our eyes meet, she doesn't look away.

"I don't have anyone else," I say.

"You have me," she whispers.

I don't remember falling asleep. Just the echo of a dial tone in my ears after the hospital hung up and the ache in my chest so sharp it felt like something inside me broke loose and didn't know how to stop bleeding.

It's noon now. Maybe. I think. I don't know.

The curtains are drawn, but light still seeps in around the edges, soft and gray like the world knows how to mourn.

Like it's trying to match the hollow in my chest. I'm still in Millie's arms on the hotel bed.

I don't know how long we've been like this.

I don't know how long she's held me. I just know that at some point, the shaking slowed.

At some point, I ran out of tears. And now I'm just.. . here. Floating. Heavy. Unmoored.

My mom is dead.

I keep thinking if I say it enough times, it'll start to sound real.

But it doesn't. It still feels like some awful dream I haven't woken up from yet.

Like I'll go to the hospital and she'll be there, her hand reaching for mine, her voice rasping something smart or soft or both. Like we'll still have time.

We don't.

It was always just us. My whole life. Me and her against everything. When I was little and scared, she used to whisper that in my ear while she held me through the night—just us, baby. Just us. And now I'm here, and she's not, and I don't know who I am without her.

I'm barely breathing when there's a soft knock at the door.

Millie strokes a hand down my back and presses a kiss to my hair. "It's probably my moms," she murmurs, voice hoarse from her own crying. "They flew in this morning."

That sentence doesn't make sense at first. Moms. Plural. Hers. I sit up, slow, like the air around me is thickening. I feel brittle. Shattered in too many places to move properly. But I nod.

She gets up gently, pads to the door in that oversized t-shirt and messy bun and the kind of tired that doesn't come from lack of sleep but from holding someone else's world on your shoulders for days. She opens the door, and then suddenly—there they are.

Mia and Luna.

They don't speak at first. Luna just crosses the room in a few quiet steps and kneels beside the bed, arms already open.

And when I fall into her, when I bury my face in her shoulder and sob like I'm six years old and just lost my whole universe, she holds me like I'm hers.

Like she's done this a hundred times before.

Like she doesn't need me to explain a single thing.

Mia follows, sitting on the bed beside me, smoothing my hair back with a gentleness that breaks something fresh in me.

"We're so sorry, sweetheart," she says softly. "So, so sorry."

I can't speak. I just cry harder. And they stay. They don't pull away. They don't ask me to be okay or strong or anything other than what I am—wrecked. They let me fall apart between them, with Millie curled on the floor in front of me, holding my hand like a promise she's never going to take back.

"She was everything," I whisper at some point, hiccuping through the words. "She was everything and now she's just—just gone."

"She'll never be just gone," Luna whispers back, brushing my hair out of my face. "You carry her with you. Always."

And that breaks me all over again. We sit like that for a while.

No one moves to break the silence. It's not really silence anyway—not with my breath hitching, not with Millie's thumb brushing over my hand, not with Mia's soft humming, like a lullaby for someone far too old to need it and far too broken not to.

I don't remember ever being held like this.

Not since my mom. Not since everything felt okay.

Eventually, though, time presses on in that cruel, forward-moving way it always does.

The sun shifts. The light outside turns harsh and white.

Reality creeps back in through the cracks in the walls, through the cheap curtains, through the way Mia gently clears her throat and Luna's hand still rests on my knee.

"You don't have to do anything right now," Mia says gently. "But when you're ready, we'll help you figure out the next step. Okay?"

The next step.

I feel sick.

I nod. Or maybe I just blink. But somehow, I'm standing. Somehow, Millie is by my side. Somehow, we're gathered around the tiny desk in the hotel room, looking at a list of local funeral homes and trying not to fall apart again.

It's so surreal. Picking out a coffin. A service. The phrases sound like knives when people say them out loud. I can't touch the phone. I can't even speak. Millie makes the calls while I sit on the floor with Luna, my head in her lap, trying to breathe.

I don't know how she's doing this. I don't know how she's still standing, still speaking, still offering her credit card like it's no big deal. But she does. She handles everything. And she looks at me like I'm the most important thing she's ever had in her arms.

When I finally manage to speak, it's only to whisper, "I don't want it to be big. She wouldn't want that."

Millie nods. "Okay. We'll keep it small. Just the people who loved her."

"There aren't many," I say, and it comes out bitter. "She didn't really... We didn't have people. Just me."

Mia sits beside me then and takes my hand. "Then we'll be her people. If that's okay with you."

And that—God, that ruins me. I cry so hard my whole body curls in on itself. I cry until I'm hoarse, until my head pounds, until Millie is on the floor again, her arms wrapped around my waist, whispering things I can't even hear, just to keep me tethered.

She was my person.

My only one.

And now I'm planning her funeral in a city she told me not to come back to. I'm wearing a tank top that doesn't feel like mine, and I'm surrounded by people who shouldn't have to be here—but are. But stayed. But held me when everything else fell apart.

"I don't know how to do this," I choke out.

"You don't have to," Millie whispers. "We'll do it together."

Hours later, the hotel room is dark except for the soft, flickering light of the TV, which we left on without volume hours ago.

Neither of us is watching it. Mia and Luna are staying in another room.

Millie's curled up at the edge of the bed, her knees drawn to her chest, her hair still damp from a shower she barely took.

I'm lying flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling like it might crack open and swallow me whole.

We haven't spoken in over an hour. But it doesn't feel uncomfortable. It feels like the only kind of silence that makes sense. A silence you have to earn. A silence that sits heavy in your chest and doesn't ask to be filled.

My throat aches. My chest hurts. I think maybe grief lives in your bones—not just in your mind, not just your heart. It sinks deeper than all that. It burrows.

I turn toward her slowly, like any faster movement might shatter me.

"She was funny," I say, barely more than a whisper.

Millie looks over at me, her eyes red-rimmed, her face soft and quiet.

"My mom. She was so funny. Even when she was sick, even when she was—God—even when she couldn't breathe right, she'd still try to make me laugh. She had this stupid thing she'd do with her eyebrows. Like... wiggle them when she was about to say something inappropriate."

Millie gives me the ghost of a smile.

"I hated when she did it," I add. "But now I'd give anything to see it again."

I sit up slowly, crossing my arms around my legs, pulling them into my chest. "She used to wake me up every birthday at exactly 2:47 a.m. Just to say, 'Happy birthday, baby. You've been mine for another year.' I used to be so annoyed."

My voice breaks.

"She died at 2:47."

Millie doesn't say anything. She just moves, quiet and slow, and sits behind me, wrapping her arms around my body, her chest against my back. Her warmth seeps into me, even through the numbness.

I lean into her. I let my head fall back against her shoulder.

"She was my whole life," I say. "And now I don't know what to do with all this... life left."

Millie's voice is almost inaudible. "You don't have to figure that out yet."

"I'm scared," I whisper.

She nods, and I feel her breath against my temple. "I know. But I'm here, okay? Let me be here."

I don't answer. I just turn, slowly, and press my face to her chest, and she holds me tighter. Her hand finds the back of my head. She kisses my hair. I cry again. I didn't think I had anything left in me, but grief is endless. It keeps finding new ways to open you.

"Thank you," I whisper eventually, my voice wrecked. "For everything."

She kisses my forehead, soft and slow. "You don't have to thank me. I'm here because I want to be. Because you matter."

It's the kind of thing people say, but Millie doesn't say things just to say them. Not her. Not ever. And when I look up at her, I know she means it. Her eyes are so soft, so sad, and so full of something I'm afraid to name. But I feel it.

Whatever this is between us—it's not fake. It never was.

And God, I think I'm falling in love with her in the middle of the worst week of my life. How messed up is that?

But I don't pull away. I let her hold me.

Because she's the only thing that doesn't hurt.

────────── ????──────────

The hotel air is stale with sleep and grief, heavy like it's pressing down on my ribs. Millie's breathing is slow behind me, curled up in the bed we haven't even really slept in since we got here. I can't rest. I haven't really rested in days.

I slip out of the room quietly, barefoot, still in one of Millie's shirts that hangs loose on my body like it doesn't belong to me.

The hallway hums faintly with electricity and silence, the carpet too soft under my feet.

I don't even realize where I'm going until I push through the side door and the warm, thick Florida air wraps around me like a wet towel.

The parking lot is dim and empty. I sit on the low concrete ledge near the shrubs, curling my arms around my knees.

The asphalt radiates heat into the soles of my feet, and my face is sticky with dried tears and salt.

It's so quiet out here, but it doesn't make the world feel gentler.

It just makes the weight in my chest feel louder.

A soft shuffle of sandals.

I don't turn around. I don't need to. There's something about the quiet presence that's immediately familiar. Steady.

Luna lowers herself onto the ledge beside me, slow like her joints ache.

She's in a soft gray T-shirt and loose drawstring pants, her dark hair tied back.

She doesn't say anything at first, just sits.

The night buzzes around us — distant crickets, the hum of a vending machine, the occasional whoosh of a car.

"You couldn't sleep either?" she asks softly, voice carrying that same warmth Millie's does when she knows I'm not okay.

I shake my head, eyes locked on the small crack in the pavement between my feet. "No."

She nods like that's the answer enough. There's another stretch of silence, but this one doesn't ache as much. It's quiet, but not empty. Her presence doesn't ask anything from me. Doesn't expect me to talk or be strong or hold it together. It just lets me sit here, unraveling.

"It's okay to hate the quiet," she says after a while, "It's okay to hate the world a little, too."

I blink hard. My vision blurs. She doesn't look at me when she continues. "When I lost my mom, I didn't speak to anyone for two weeks—"

I turn to her slowly, something in me stuttering to a stop. "You... lost your mom?"

She nods, her jaw tight. "I was twelve. Her name was Amelia."

My heart stings in my chest. "That's..." I swallow hard. "That's Millie's name."

Luna smiles faintly, the kind that comes with years of aching. "Yeah. She's named after both her grandmothers. Amelia and Elizabeth."

I blink again, fresh tears slipping out before I can stop them. "She never told me that."

"She doesn't tell a lot of people. I think she's still carrying all of us, all the time."

There are no stars out tonight. Just a blanket of low, heavy clouds and the muted glow of the city bleeding into the horizon. Somewhere below, a pool filter hums to life. A car door slams. The world is still moving. And I hate it for that.

When Luna speaks again, her voice is slower.

Calmer. Steadier. "Grief is a shape-shifter," she says.

"Sometimes it's sharp. Sometimes it's dull.

Sometimes it feels like a hole in your chest, and sometimes it's just this.

.. this buzzing behind your ribs, like something's missing but you can't name it.

"

My throat tightens. I blink, but the tears spill anyway.

"It doesn't go away," she continues, softer now.

"People tell you it gets better. That you'll move on.

But the truth is... it just becomes part of how you move.

You learn to carry it. Some days you forget you're even holding it.

Other days it floors you before you've had your morning coffee. "

I press my palms hard to my eyes. I don't want her to see me like this, but I also don't care. I'm shaking. My body feels too small for all of this pain. I can't even tell where it's coming from anymore—my chest, my stomach, my hands. Everything hurts.

"I don't know how to live without her," I whisper, voice torn open at the edges. "I don't know how to breathe in a world where she's not. I don't—" My voice breaks, and I curl in on myself, arms wrapped around my knees like I'm trying to hold myself together with sheer force.

Luna doesn't answer right away. She doesn't rush in with promises she can't keep. She just lets the silence grow again, lets it settle in like it belongs here. And then, gently, her hand comes to rest between my shoulder blades. Steady. Warm. Real.

"I know," she says, and her voice catches too.

"I know." There's a tremble in the words.

A wound buried just beneath them. I feel it like a mirror to my own.

"I thought I'd never feel okay again. I'd wake up and reach for her and remember she was gone, and it would knock the wind out of me all over again. "

I breathe through the sob clawing up my throat. It hurts. God, it hurts so bad I want to scream.

"She was everything," I say, choking on it. "She raised me alone. She gave up everything for me and now she's just... gone. And I wasn't even there when it happened. I was asleep. I didn't get to say goodbye."

Luna's hand moves in slow, comforting circles. "That's not your fault, Harper."

"But—"

"It's not your fault," she says again, firmer now. "Dying doesn't wait for goodbyes. If it did, no one would ever have to hurt like this. She knew you loved her. That matters more than a goodbye."

The words crack something in me. I press my forehead to my knees and cry like I haven't since I was a kid. Ugly, broken sobs. My whole body trembles with it. Luna doesn't try to hush me. She doesn't say I'll be okay. She just stays. Her hand never leaves my back.

When I finally lift my head, my face is soaked, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I glance over at her, and something in her eyes is shining too. But she's solid. Like bedrock. Like she's been cracked before and learned how to stay standing anyway.

I wipe at my face with the edge of my sleeve, but it doesn't help. Everything's still soaked. My cheeks. My lashes. My hands. I feel like I've been peeled open, like there's nothing between me and the world but the thinnest layer of skin.

Luna doesn't say anything, not right away. She just watches me for a moment like she sees all of it—the bruises that grief leaves behind. Not on the body, but deeper. The kind you carry in your chest. In your breath. In your silence.

Then, gently, she speaks. "You don't have to hold it all by yourself, you know."

I blink at her, swallowing around the lump in my throat. "It feels like I do," I whisper. "It was always just us. Me and her. She was everything. My mom. My best friend. My whole fucking life."

My voice cracks again, sharp and hollow. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to breathe, trying to make the air go in. It doesn't want to.

"I don't know how to be a person without her."

There's a long pause. Then Luna shifts closer, her knees brushing mine, her hand moving to rest gently over mine. "You don't have to know how," she says. "Not yet. Not tonight. All you have to do is keep breathing."

"I don't want to." I didn't mean to say it out loud. But it slips out, raw and small and terrifying. "I don't want to breathe without her. I don't want to do any of this."

Luna doesn't flinch. She just nods slowly, like she understands. Like she's been right there too.

"I know," she says. Her voice is low. Steady.

"I remember sitting in my room the night after we buried her, staring at the ceiling and thinking—how the hell is everything still moving?

How is there still sun and traffic and commercials on TV?

How is there anything without her?"

A tear falls from the corner of her eye, but she doesn't wipe it away.

"I was just a kid. And suddenly, it was just me and my dad, and I didn't know how to fill the space she left behind. I still don't, some days."

My chest caves at that. I don't even care that I'm crying again.

"She would sing in the mornings," I whisper. "When she made breakfast. And it was awful—off-key and loud and usually whatever old song was stuck in her head. I hated it as a teenager. I'd put my headphones in and roll my eyes. But now—" I can't finish. I cover my mouth and cry.

Now there's nothing. Just silence.

"She sounds like she was amazing," Luna says, voice warm and aching. "The kind of mother people wish they had."

"She was," I manage. "God, she was. She didn't have anything, but she gave me everything."

"And that," Luna says softly, "means you'll never lose her. Not really. That kind of love doesn't vanish. It builds into you."

I look at her through the blur of tears. "It still hurts like hell."

"It always will," she says. "But the way it hurts will change. Right now, it's ripping you apart. Someday, it'll live beside you instead of inside you."

I nod, even though I can't imagine it.

"She was supposed to be there," I say. "For everything.

For when I figured out who I am. For when I got married.

Had kids. I don't even know if I want kids, but she was supposed to be there to ask me.

To see. To be there."

The tears come faster now.

Messy. Exhausting. "She was supposed to be there. "

Luna doesn't say it's unfair. She doesn't try to fix it. She just pulls me into her arms like I'm her own, like she knows how to hold broken things without asking them to be whole.

"I wish I could give her back to you," she whispers. "I would if I could."

I bury my face in her shoulder and sob. Just sob. And for a little while, neither of us speaks. There's only the sound of my grief. And her heart, steady under my ear. When I finally lift my head again, she smooths the hair from my face.

"You've got her in you," she says. "And that's a light the world doesn't lose. Not ever."

Suddenly, there's the sound of quick footsteps—bare, almost frantic—followed by a familiar voice breaking through the night.

"Harper?"

Millie.

I stiffen instinctively, swiping at my face with the sleeves of my shirt even though it's useless now. My eyes are swollen, my nose raw. Luna straightens beside me but doesn't pull away.

"Out here," she calls softly, and a second later, Millie rounds the corner, her eyes wide, hair tousled from sleep, wearing nothing but a big t-shirt and the panic of not finding me in bed.

Her gaze snaps to me, sitting crumpled on the patio chair with my knees pulled up to my chest and Luna steady beside me. Her face softens instantly.

"Oh," she breathes. Her shoulders drop. "Jesus, Harps... I thought..."

She doesn't finish it. Doesn't have to.

I look at her and something in my chest shatters all over again.

I reach for her without thinking, and she crosses the distance in two strides.

She sinks to her knees in front of me, wrapping her arms around my waist like she needs to feel I'm real.

I bury my face in her neck and cling. Her skin smells like sleep and something warm. Safe.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I couldn't— I just needed—"

"I know," she murmurs. "It's okay. I just got scared when you weren't there."

She pulls back a little, just enough to look over her shoulder at Luna. "You two... good?"

Luna smiles faintly, eyes soft. "Yeah, baby. We're okay."

She reaches out and cups Millie's cheek, brushing her thumb over her temple like it's second nature. Then she leans in and presses a kiss to her forehead.

"I love you," Luna says, voice low but firm. "Take care of her. She's going to need you."

Millie blinks, nods, and something raw passes between them. Then she turns back to me, her hand finding mine like a promise. Her thumb strokes the back of it, gentle and grounding. I swallow hard, the lump in my throat refusing to ease.

"You okay to come back inside?" she asks.

I nod, barely. "Can you... just sit with me a little longer?"

Millie glances at Luna, who nods and stands, giving me a quiet squeeze on the shoulder before stepping away. Leaving us here in the dark.

Millie settles into the chair beside mine and pulls the blanket from her lap to cover both of us.

I lean into her without thinking. My head on her shoulder.

Her hand on my thigh. We don't say anything for a long time.

Just breathe. Just sit. And in the silence, with grief curling like smoke around my chest, I think—for the first time all day—I don't feel completely alone.