Page 84 of The Seven Year Slip

She stepped back to welcome me into her apartment. “Come in, come in. I was just about to make some coffee. Are you a coffee drinker? You have to be. My son makes thebestcoffee...”

What my aunt had failed to mention, however, was that Vera had a very slight Southern accent, and her apartment was filled with pictures of a small Southern town. I didn’t look at them too thoroughly as I came into the living room and sat down, and she fixed us two cups of coffee and sat beside me. I was a little numb,everything a blur. After so many years of hearing stories about this woman named Vera, here she was in the flesh.

This was the woman Analea had loved so much she let her go.

“I was wondering when I’d be able to meet you,” Vera said as she sat down beside me. “It’s a surprise, though. Is everything all right?”

In reply, I reached into my purse and pulled out the letter she’d sent my aunt. It was a bit crinkled from battling with my wallet, but I smoothed it down and handed it back. “I’m sorry,” I began, because I wasn’t sure what else to say.

She frowned as she took the unopened letter. “Oh,” she whispered, realization dawning, “is she...”

There were things that were hard to do—complicated division without a calculator, a hundred-mile marathon, catching a connecting flight at LAX in twenty minutes—but this was by far the hardest. Finding the words, mustering them up, teaching my mouth how to say them—teaching my heart how to understand them...

I would never wish this on anyone.

“She passed away,” I forced out, unable to look at her, trying to keep myself tied tightly in a bow. Together. “About six months ago.”

Her breath hitched. Her grip on the letter tightened. “I didn’t know,” she said quietly. She looked down at the letter. Then up at me again. “Oh, Clementine.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it tightly. “You see, I recently moved back to the city. My son has a job here, and I wanted to be near him,” she rambled, because it felt better than lingering on those words—she passed away. She swallowed her sadness and said, after a moment, as she gathered herself back together, “May I ask what happened?”

No, I wanted to reply, but not because I was ashamed. I wasn’t sure if I could talk about it without crying.

It was why I didn’t talk about it at all—with anyone.

“She... she hadn’t been sleeping well, so her doctor prescribed her some medicine a while ago. And she just...” For all the times I’d rehearsed this, they all failed me now. I didn’t know how to explain it. I was doing a bad job. “The neighbors called for a wellness check on New Year’s Day when she wouldn’t answer the door, but it was too late.” I pursed my lips, screwing them tightly closed as I felt a sob bubble up from my chest. “She just went to sleep. She took enough that she knew she wouldn’t wake up. They found her in her favorite chair.”

“The blue one.Oh,” Vera’s voice cracked. She dropped the letter and pressed her hands against her mouth.“Oh, Annie.”

Because what else could you say?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, pressing my nails into my hands, focusing on the sharp pain. “There’s no easy way to talk about it. I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, honey, it isn’t you. You did nothing wrong,” she said—

But I did, didn’t I? I should have seen the signs. I should have saved her. I should have—

And then this woman whom I didn’t know wrapped her arms around me and pressed me tightly into her burnt-orange blouse, and it felt like permission. The kind I hadn’t let myself have for six months. The kind of permission that I’d been waiting for, as I sat alone in my aunt’s apartment, and grief welled up so high it felt suffocating. The permission I thought I’d given myself, but it hadn’t been permission to cry—it had been a command to be strong. To be okay. I told myself, over and over, I had to be okay.

And finally—finally—someone gave me permission to come undone.

“It’s not your fault,” she said into my hair as a sob escaped my mouth.

“She left,” I whispered, my voice tight and high. “She left.”

And she broke my heart.

This woman who I didn’t know, who I’d only ever imagined in my aunt’s stories, held me tightly as I cried, and she cried with me. I cried because she left me—she just left, even as I chased her, her coattails fluttering, just out of reach. She left and I was still here and there were so many things she hadn’t done yet, or wouldn’t ever do in the future. There were sunrises she’d never see and Christmases in Rockefeller Plaza she’d never complain about and layovers she’d never catch and wine she’d never drink with me again at that yellow table of hers as we ate fettuccine that was never the same twice.

I’d never see her again.

She was never coming back.

As I sat there crying into Vera’s shoulder, it felt like a wall had suddenly come down, all of my pent-up grief and sadness washing away like a broken dam. After a while, we finally pried ourselves apart, and she got a box of tissues and dabbed her eyes.

“What happened to the apartment?” she asked.

“She gave it to me in her will,” I replied, then grabbed a few tissues and cleaned my face. It felt raw and puffy.

She nodded, looking a little relieved. “Oh, good. You know it was mine before she bought it? Well, notmine—I only rented it from this stodgy old man who overcharged for it. He passed away, so I had to move out, and his family sold it to your aunt. I don’t think they ever knew what it did.”

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