Page 44 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
He doesn’t tell me it’s okay. He doesn’t say:butyou’ll get through it. He gives me the gift of the truth—that if I do make it past this, it will be anand. I will be all right, and this will devastate me. Both things true at once.
“Maren and Autumn are still waiting for a car,” he tells me, and I think,Who?Everything else that’s happened tonight, everything else that’s happened my whole life, feels like it happened to someone else. “What do you need?”
I blink up at him under the fluorescent hallway lights. I have no idea what I need. I only know I have to survive this night, to find a way to exist in my body as this happens. From inside Vera’s room, the machines wail on.
“Here,” Miller says, when I still haven’t spoken. He takes my elbow, guides me into a chair against the wall. When I sit, it registers dully that my feet feel better, and I look down at them. Stupid heels. “Water?” he asks. “There’s a café on the first floor. Tea?”
“We can go.” I look up, and the guy with Felix meets my eyes. His are big and brown and friendly. He’s holding Felix’s hand. “We’ll bring up some drinks.”
Felix nods, his lips pressed together. He hesitates but then steps toward me, runs one hand over my hair. “We’ll be right back, okay?”
I nod, and as they move down the hallway, Miller crouches in front of me so our eyes are level. When I look at him, I know what I want, and I know I can’t say it.
“Miller,” I whisper.Stay.
His eyes remain on mine, waiting for me to finish my sentence. When I don’t, he moves into the chair next to me. And just like after I tore my arm apart, I am bad, bad company. But all night—as I cry soundlessly, as I move in and out of Vera’s room, as Maren and Felix come and eventually go—Miller stays.
25
The funeral is a week later, in the same church where my parents got married. Maren’s there, and Miller with his parents, and a few of Dad’s employees from Beans. Vera’s old colleagues from the university fill the back pews and Felix comes with his boyfriend, Grey, who brought me tea in the hospital.
Dad and I let the pastor speak for us, because neither of us knows what to say. Funerals feel like something that happen to other people, and I’m lost in the center of this one. Vera was funny, and sneaky, and smart as all hell. This weird, reverent, quiet ceremony feels like it has nothing to do with her at all. I keep waiting for her to nudge me in the pew, lean close to whisper something in my ear that’ll make me snort-laugh like a piglet. And it keeps not happening.
“She would’ve hated that,” Miller says when it’s over and we’re all standing in the parking lot. I’m sitting on the hood of Dad’s truck, watching him shake hands with a bunch of people I’ve nevermet. No one seems to know quite how to extricate themselves from this, or when it’s actually supposed to end. Like whoever says goodbye first breaks the spell, or all our hearts.
Miller leans against the bumper next to me. “You okay?”
“You’re right,” I say, avoiding the question. It’s a relief to hear him say it—shewould’vehated that. The whole thing was so un-Vera, the awkward joint planning effort of my dad and Vera’s middle-aged, estranged niece. “I think if it hadn’t gone so fast in the end, she would’ve planned her own send-off. And it wouldn’t have been anything like that.”
“What do you think she’d have done?”
I look at him, late-afternoon sun in his eyes. No one’s asked me anything about Vera all week, like they’re worried if they bring her up I’ll remember she’s dead. But how could I forget? Being asked about her feels like a small mercy—all I want to do is talk about her.
“Make everyone do some crazy-hard hike,” I say, and Miller smiles. “Poles, crampons, the whole thing. Maybe bury her inheritance at the end of the trail and see who gets there first.”
He laughs, and it makes me smile on instinct.
“I bet she’d have asked us to burn all her student papers in some kind of ceremonial pyre,” Miller says. He’s in dress pants and a button-down, one elbow leaned onto the hood. “She hated grading.”
“Hatedit,” I groan, tilting my head back. “God, that woman could complain.”
“Loved the students, though,” Miller says. “I bet she was a great professor.”
“The best.”
We look at each other, and it feels like a small, golden bubble breaking the darkness of the last few days. We canceled this week’s episode ofMASH with Mo,but we’re still leaving for New York in the morning. Miller’s hand lifts just a little, like he’s going to reach for me, before he stops himself.
“I hate that she’s gone,” he says, and we both look away.
“Yeah,” I whisper. Across the parking lot, Dad turns to look at us. “Me too.”
When everyone finally disperses, we get in Dad’s truck and drive an hour to Rocky Mountain National Park. Still in our funeral clothes—black suit, black dress—we put on boots and hike twenty minutes to Alberta Falls.
This was in Vera’s will, along with the deed to her house and everything else that was left, too. One last request of us:After they lay me to rest, I want Rosie and Pete to go look at something beautiful.No poles, or crampons, or buried treasure. But finally, something we’re doing feels like it makes sense.
When we get to the waterfall, there are a few clusters of hikers taking pictures. It’s mid-December, but with the sun high in the sky and no snow on the trails, the park’s still busy. Dad points to a flat rock jutted out over the falls and I follow him, sit next to him on the dusty ledge. The water is loud, raging on, same as it always has.
“I love you,” Dad says, and my throat closes up. He turns to look at me and I just nod, unable to speak.
