Page 38

HARPER

I don't remember much about the hours after.

People keep handing me papers. Slipping forms across the counter. Repeating words like documentation, certified copy, next of kin. I nod, mostly. Sometimes I blink. Sometimes I sign things. I don't read them. I don't ask questions. I'm afraid if I open my mouth, I'll never stop screaming.

There's a woman behind a desk—one of the hospital social workers, maybe.

I can't remember her name. She wears a soft pink blouse and a pearl necklace that keeps catching on the collar.

She keeps using the word "process." As in part of the process, as in grieving is a process, as in we'll process the paperwork today.

I want to ask her if she's ever had to box up a life she wasn't ready to lose.

Millie's sitting beside me. Her knee keeps brushing mine, gently.

Deliberately. A tether. I haven't looked at her since we walked in, but I know she's the reason I haven't curled up under the receptionist's desk and stayed there.

She keeps declining calls on my behalf. She gently pulls away the clipboard when I freeze halfway through signing something.

She tells the funeral home that it's going to be very small, just four of us, and no, we won't need a venue.

We don't know anyone in Florida. We don't have family. My mom is all I had.

It takes hours. And I don't say a single word. Not until we're back in the hotel room and the door shuts behind us with a soft, final click.

"I hated the way they said her name," I murmur.

Millie turns to me like she's surprised I've spoken at all. "What do you mean?"

I sit down on the edge of the bed, knees shaking. "Like she was a task. A file in a cabinet. Like it was over." My throat burns. "She's not over. She's my mom."

Millie doesn't say anything. Just walks over slowly and kneels in front of me, hands resting on my thighs like she's steadying me there. I can't look her in the eye. If I do, I'll start crying again, and I'm so, so tired of crying.

"I know," she whispers. "She's not over."

The funeral is the next morning.

They bring her in through a side door—quiet, efficient, like she's a delivery.

Like she's just another item on the schedule.

The casket is plain. Unadorned. Soft wood, matte finish, no gold or silver trim.

It doesn't look like it belongs to someone who smiled like she did. It looks like it was made to disappear.

We're in a small, sterile room tucked behind the cremation center.

No pews. No stained glass. No soft organ music humming beneath the weight of mourning.

Just blue chairs in four neat rows, gray carpet that smells faintly of bleach, and artificial eucalyptus curling through the vents like it's supposed to ease something it has no right to touch.

There are only four of us. Me. Millie. Luna. Mia. That's it.

There's no slideshow. No hymns. No pastor standing up front saying her name with practiced reverence. No table of photographs. No old neighbors or distant relatives hugging me too tightly and telling me she's in a better place.

Just a box.

Just my mother in a box.

The funeral director gives a tight nod and disappears. The silence that settles over the room after that is unbearable. I want to scream into it. Tear it in half. Make someone say something.

But I can't speak.

I wrote something last night. Or tried to.

In the hotel bathroom, crouched on the cold tile because I didn't want to wake Millie.

I used a complimentary notepad and the pen from the nightstand.

I wrote through tears I didn't wipe away.

It's barely a paragraph. But it felt like something. A scrap of love I could leave with her.

Now, standing in front of her casket, the paper trembles in my hand. I stare at the words and they don't look real. My throat locks. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

Millie rises beside me before I can even lower my arm. She takes the paper from me without asking. Her fingertips brush mine—steady, warm—and I know she's giving me an out. I let her take it.

Her voice fills the room.

She doesn't pretend. She doesn't say Harper's mom was like a second mother to me. She doesn't lie about closeness she didn't have. Instead, she speaks plainly. Softly.

"She raised Harper with everything she had," Millie says, eyes low, voice even. "You can feel that kind of love, just by looking at the person she grew. It lingers. It lives on."

My face crumples.

I don't realize I've sunk back into the chair until I feel Millie's hand on my back. She's returned without fanfare. Just sits beside me, like she always does. Like gravity pulls her to me without effort.

Luna lays flowers at the foot of the casket. Soft white lilies. Mia squeezes my hand and doesn't let go, not even when her own shoulders begin to shake. I hear her sniff quietly. Feel the weight of it in my own chest.

Then the silence returns. It hangs in the room like smoke—dense and heavy.

I stare at the casket. My fingers curl into fists in my lap. I try to picture her inside it, and I can't. I try not to picture it, and I still can't.

There's a photo of her at the front of the room. I printed it at the last second, had to rush to find a place open at seven in the morning. It's the only one I could find where she looked like her.

She's laughing. Holding a grocery bag in one hand and a box of cookies in the other. Her sunglasses are crooked, her hair pulled into a messy bun, the wind catching her shirt like wings.

She's alive in it. So alive. It doesn't match anything about this room. She doesn't belong in a box.

Afterward, the funeral director says something I don't hear. Luna murmurs a quiet "thank you" and takes Mia's hand. They both look at me. I can't look back. I'm locked in place. Frozen. My mother is here and I am still her daughter and I don't know how to leave her.

I don't know how to leave her. Luna kneels down beside me. Her hand rests gently on my shoulder. "We'll give you a minute," she says, voice low and impossibly kind. She kisses the top of my head before standing.

Mia touches my cheek with her palm—soft, lingering—and then they're gone.

The door clicks shut. Millie stays. She sinks to the floor beside me, folding her legs like we're kids on a rug somewhere, waiting for storytime.

I cover my face. My palms are damp. I'm trembling. "She was everything," I whisper. "Everything I had. She used to... she used to make up songs in the car. About traffic. About squirrels. About anything. Just to make me laugh."

Millie doesn't speak.

"She used to let me fall asleep in her bed when I was scared. She always smelled like cinnamon gum and shampoo. She'd talk in her sleep sometimes—little things, nonsense, like she was still halfway in a dream."

I press my hands to my mouth. The sob rips out of me so violently it doesn't even sound human.

"I don't know who I am without her."

Millie reaches up, gently. She pulls me toward her, slow and careful, and I go without resistance. My forehead finds her shoulder, and then I collapse into her arms. She holds me tight. Tight enough that I feel like maybe I won't fall through the floor.

"I don't know who I am," I cry again.

"You're Harper," she whispers. "You're hers. And you still are."

When the door opens and the workers come in, I flinch. They say something. I don't hear it. I only feel the shift in the air—the moment I realize they're here for her.

The moment they take her away, I scream.

Not with words. Just sound. Desperate, raw, full of everything I can't put into a sentence.

Millie's arms wrap around me so fast I barely register that I'm falling.

And I break. Right there.

Sobbing into her chest. Hands clinging to her like I'm drowning and she's the only thing keeping me from sinking.

She rocks me. She holds me.

The hotel room feels too clean when we get back.

Too tidy. Like nothing in it could possibly understand that someone died this morning.

The bed is made. The little chocolates the staff left on the pillows are still there, untouched.

The air conditioning hums low in the corner like it has nothing better to do.

My mother's ashes are in a sealed box at the foot of the bed.

I walk past it like it's nothing. Like I didn't just leave her behind.

Like I didn't kiss her forehead one last time and whisper I love you when her body had already gone cold.

Like I didn't lose the only person who ever remembered my kindergarten teacher's name or the way I cried during thunderstorms.

I walk into the bathroom and close the door and sit on the edge of the tub with my hands in my lap, staring at nothing.

There's something ringing in my ears. A kind of static.

I don't take off my dress. I don't wash my face.

I don't cry. I just sit there, frozen in grief, like a glass about to crack.

The door opens quietly after a few minutes. I don't hear her footsteps, but I know it's Millie. She doesn't knock. She never has to. She just knows when to come. When to be still.

She kneels in front of me like she did at the funeral, only this time her hands find my knees first. Gentle. Just a grounding touch. Her thumbs brush circles into the fabric of my tights.

"I brought you some water," she whispers, nodding toward the counter. "And snacks. I didn't know what kind. I just... I just got all of them."

That makes something in me crack. Not in a loud way. Just a little fissure down the middle. I look at her, her eyes are red. She's trying not to show it, but she cried too. I can see it in the way her lashes clump together. The way her lip trembles when she exhales.

"You didn't have to come in here," I say, my voice thin and raw. "You don't have to keep... doing this."

Millie tilts her head. "Doing what?"

"Taking care of me."

Her fingers tighten slightly against my knees. Her brows furrow, not in frustration, but something closer to hurt.

"I'm not doing it because I have to, Harper." Her voice is so soft I almost miss it. "I'm doing it because you're grieving. Because I care about you. I want to be here."

I blink fast. The tears don't fall, but they burn.

"We're not even—"

"Don't," she says gently, cutting me off. "Don't say we're not real. Not right now."

I look away. My vision blurs around the edges. She shifts closer, slow and careful. Her knees brush mine. Her fingers lift to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Her touch is featherlight, reverent.

"I don't care what we are or aren't supposed to be," she murmurs. "I'm here. I'm staying. That's real."

I press the heel of my hand to my chest. "It hurts."

"I know."

"It's like—I can't breathe unless I'm thinking about her. But I can't breathe when I do, either. And everyone keeps saying time will help, but I don't want time. I want her."

I close my eyes. She leans forward and rests her forehead against mine, like we're praying together, like she's holding me up with just that one point of contact. Her breath is warm. Her presence is steady. And for a second, just one, I feel the ache ease. Just enough to catch my breath.

"I don't know how to go home," I whisper. "She's not in it anymore."

Millie pulls back slightly, just enough to look at me. Her eyes search mine, slow and careful, like she's memorizing something important.

"Then don't," she says gently. "Not yet."

I blink. "Stay here. With me. As long as you need. We'll figure it out together."

I want to argue. I want to tell her she doesn't have to say things like that.

But the truth is—right now, I can't imagine going anywhere else.

I don't want to sleep in a bed without her.

I don't want to walk into my kitchen and find her mug still in the sink.

I don't want to sit in silence in a space that used to be full of her humming.

So I nod. Just once. And when Millie stands and reaches for my hands, I let her pull me up. She leads me to the bed. She pulls back the covers. I don't fight her. I just let myself lie down.

She climbs in behind me, curling close, one arm draped lightly over my waist.

I wake up to light pressing against my eyelids.

Soft and golden, the kind of morning sun that would've once meant pancakes in the kitchen and my mom humming along to an old James Taylor record.

The kind that would've smelled like maple syrup and coffee and the laundry she always forgot in the dryer. The kind of light that meant home.

Now it means nothing. Or maybe it means too much.

I don't move. My face is pressed into the pillow, and everything aches.

Not my body—my body is fine, untouched, whole.

It's everything else. My chest. My ribs.

My lungs. Like they've been hollowed out and scraped raw.

Like grief has made a home inside me and refuses to leave.

Millie's still here.

I feel her behind me, curled up close, her arm draped softly across my waist like it's nothing. Like it's everything. Her breath moves against the back of my neck, slow and steady, like she stayed awake just to make sure I was still breathing too.

I shift a little, just enough to turn onto my back. Her arm moves with me. She doesn't let go. Her eyes are open now—quiet, soft, watching me with something unreadable in them. Something that makes me feel like I'm about to fall apart again.

"Hey," she whispers.

My throat is dry. It takes too long to answer. "Hi."

We just look at each other for a moment. There's no need to fill the silence with anything. She's always been good at that—holding space without trying to fix it.

Her thumb brushes across the back of my hand where it rests between us. Barely a touch, but I feel it like lightning.

"You didn't talk in your sleep last night," she says softly.

I swallow. "That's good."

She nods. Her hair is a mess. She hasn't brushed it yet. There's a pillow crease on her cheek. It makes her look young. Real. Like we're not two people lying in a hotel bed with my mother's ashes boxed up a few feet away.

"I kept waking up," she says after a pause. "Just to check if you were still here."

I blink. "Why?"

She looks down. Shrugs a little. "I don't know. I guess I thought if I let go, you'd disappear too."

That cracks me open more than anything else could've. My chest caves inward. My eyes sting. I press the heel of my hand against my forehead and breathe like it's something I've forgotten how to do.

"I'm not going anywhere," I whisper. "I just don't know how to be anyone anymore."

Millie doesn't flinch. She shifts closer, brushing her forehead lightly against my temple.

"Then I'll be here until you remember."

I close my eyes. A tear slips down my cheek and hits the pillow without a sound.

I want to tell her how loud the world feels now that my mom isn't in it.

I want to tell her how nothing tastes like anything, how I keep expecting to hear her voice in the other room, how I saw a woman in the lobby yesterday with the same haircut and nearly threw up in the elevator.

But I can't. So I just say, "She always said I was too much like her."

Millie's hand brushes a strand of hair from my face. "I think that's the best thing you could be."

I bite my lip. My heart twists in a way that's almost unbearable. "She always made me feel safe. Even when everything else sucked. She always knew what to do. What to say. And now she's just... gone. And I don't know how to hold that. I don't know how to make sense of a world where she's not."

"You don't have to," Millie says quietly. "Not yet. Maybe not ever. You just have to keep waking up. Keep breathing. Keep letting the people who love you help carry it when it gets too heavy."

I meet her eyes. It would be so easy to love her. But my heart is still bleeding and my hands are too full of grief to hold anything else. And yet—she's still here. Steady. Soft. Warm. Her touch doesn't ask for anything. Her presence doesn't demand.

She just stays. We don't leave the room for hours.

There's no reason to. No appointments.

No more decisions to make. The ashes are in a white box now, sealed and resting on the dresser like something holy and horrifying all at once.

My mom's entire life reduced to dust and a certificate in a manila envelope.

I still can't look at it. Millie orders tea and a muffin from the hotel café and only eats half of it. She doesn't ask me if I'm hungry. I think she knows the answer already. She just peels back the wrapper and sets it on the nightstand in case I change my mind.

We don't talk much. There's not a lot to say. Every word feels like it would crack the silence wide open, and I'm not ready for that. I'm not sure I ever will be.

But Millie stays.

She lies on her side next to me, one leg draped over mine, her fingers tracing absent-minded shapes on the back of my hand. Nothing suggestive. Just connection. Just proof that I'm still here. That she is too.

I've never needed someone like this before. Not even my mom, not like this. I've never wanted to crawl into someone's chest and disappear. Never wanted to be small, broken, and held without question.

But Millie makes me feel like I could. Like I already am.

The sun starts to dip outside the window, casting long golden shadows across the carpet. It catches on Millie's hair and makes her glow like something unreal. I watch her through half-lidded eyes, too tired to speak, too raw to sleep.

"You don't have to talk," she murmurs, as if she can hear me thinking. "But if you want to, I'm listening."

My throat aches. It takes a second to find the shape of a word.

"I keep thinking about her hands." Millie looks at me gently.

Waits. "They were always so warm," I whisper.

"Even when she was sick. Even in the hospital.

I used to joke that she had a space heater in her palms or something.

She said it was just the mom gene."

Millie's fingers thread between mine.

"I keep... forgetting she's gone," I say, and the words burn.

"I keep thinking I should text her. Or tell her something.

Or ask her what she wants for dinner. And then I remember.

And it feels like I'm drowning all over again. "

Millie doesn't try to pull me out of it. She just shifts closer and presses her forehead to my temple.

"I think it'll be like that for a while," she says, so soft. "And I think that's okay. It means she mattered. It means she's still here in the ways that count."

"I miss her so much," I breathe. "It hurts. Everything hurts."

"I know," she whispers. "I know it does."

Her voice is wrecked too. She's trying so hard not to cry, and that makes me... love her. Not in the shiny, butterflies-in-your-stomach way. In the bone-deep, breathless, holy kind of way. The kind that aches. The kind that roots itself inside you and waits for you to heal enough to feel it.

She kisses the side of my head. Light. Careful.

And something in my chest breaks open.

I turn my face toward her shoulder and I cry again—quieter this time, but no less real. Her shirt is damp. My fists are clenched. Her arm wraps around me like it's the easiest thing in the world. Like I'm not too much. Like none of this is.

We stay like that for a long time. Long enough that the light fades completely, and the room goes dim with it. The only sound is the hum of the air conditioner and our breathing—mine uneven, hers steady. Anchoring.

Millie's hand slides gently over my arm. Her touch is featherlight, but I feel it like a pulse under my skin. She doesn't say anything, doesn't move to fix me or hold the pieces together. She just stays.

I press my forehead harder to her shoulder, grounding myself in the scent of her hoodie—soft laundry soap and skin and something that's just her. Familiar now. Safe.

Her voice is a whisper when she finally speaks. "I'm here, okay?"

I nod. Just a little. My throat is too full to answer.

Eventually, I shift, slow and stiff, like my body forgot how to move.

I sit up just enough to look at her. Her red hair's pulled into a messy low braid, some pieces falling loose around her face.

She's in an oversized grey shirt—mine, actually—and black cotton shorts.

Her eyes are a little puffy, like she's cried too, or like she's barely slept.

But they're so full. Wide. Watching me like I'm something she's trying to memorize in case I disappear.

"You don't have to stay," I say hoarsely. It's a lie. A test. Something old in me still waiting for people to leave.

Millie doesn't flinch. "I know I don't."

And she doesn't go.

I blink down at our hands, still tangled. Her thumb brushes over mine, slow and steady. And something catches in my chest again, a tenderness so sharp it almost aches more than the grief.

"Your mom told me," I say after a moment. "About your name."

Millie tilts her head.

"Amelia Elizabeth," I murmur. "She said you were named after your grandmothers."

Her smile is small. Quiet. "Yeah."

"I didn't know," I say, my voice barely more than breath. "She—she told me the night before the funeral. She... she really loves you. I could see it."

Millie's eyes soften. "I love her too. I mean, you know. My mom, of course. But your mom... she was so kind to me. Even when she didn't know what we were. Even when I didn't know."

I don't know what that means exactly, but the heat in my chest deepens.

"She called you my person," I whisper. "Said I'd need you."

Millie's breath catches. She looks down like she's trying to hide it, but I see the way her throat moves, the way her lip trembles. And it makes me want to hold her this time. It makes me want to lean in, close the space, offer something back.

But I don't move. I just stare at her, memorize the curve of her cheekbone and the faint shadow under her eyes. The bruise-blue fatigue from everything we've lived through these last days. The impossible gentleness in the way she's holding me.

"I'm sorry you're seeing me like this," I say after a long time. "Like... this version of me."

Millie shakes her head. "I don't want a version of you. I want you. All of it. The messy parts. The quiet parts. This part."

"Even when I'm wrecked?" I ask, trying not to cry again.

"Especially when you're wrecked," she whispers. "That's when it matters most."

I don't know what to say to that. I feel like I've been peeled open and read.

I feel raw. I feel seen. I shift closer, just a little, and my knee touches hers.

She doesn't move away. Her fingers tighten around mine like she's answering a question I didn't know I asked.

We sit in the dark for a while longer. I lean my head back against the wall, my body aching, my heart aching worse.

And then, softly, I say, "I don't know how to live without her."

Millie doesn't respond right away. Just breathes. Just stays. Finally, she turns to me, her voice like velvet even in the quiet.

"Then don't. Not yet. Just breathe for now. One breath at a time. I'll be here."

And somehow, against every broken, grieving part of me, that's enough.