I spent the rest of my time off trying to put together an outline for my story on Harry. I kept typing it then crumpling it up and being forced to start all over again, unable to find the right words to describe him in a way that did him any justice. I was beginning to get discouraged, the words of all my coworkers over the years filling my brain more than my own.

I decided to go to Philadelphia Sunday night, when I was so angry with myself and the empty paper before me that I wanted to pull my hair out. I was packed for a twenty-four hour stay and at the train station within half an hour, without even worrying with calling my mother because I knew she'd be happy to see me, expected or not. The whole hour and a half ride there was spent with my notebook open in my lap, reading over the details I knew about Harry despite the wild bumps of the tracks.

When I arrived, I hailed a car for myself, one of the ones that just waited outside the station until an arriver needed them. It made me miss Charles and the big black car that he drove around. I shouldn't have missed either one of them and I knew that, knew it was weird and unprofessional at best, but I couldn't really help how I felt when it came to Harry.

"Where are you headed?" the driver asked as I slid in with my suitcase and papers. I gave him my home address, the one I'd lived in my whole life before shipping off to New York City, the numbers and street name branded into my memory forever. He smiled and tipped his hat before steering off the curb and onto the road, the roads I recognized that blissfully didn't remind me of anyone except myself.

My childhood home was the same as I'd left it, small with brown shutters and a brick walkway. My mother had planted new flowers since I'd last been, the dirt was still unsettled and the little green twigs were barely starting to bloom, but everything else look relatively similar. It was comforting to have something that I knew would always be the same. That old house would've never jumped out at me with new information or beat around the bush about who or what it was. Being back at home was a fresh reminder that not everything was about Harry and that some things don't have to change.

I twisted the doorknob to find that it was already unlocked, which worried me slightly, but I assumed that it was just because she had maybe been out a while earlier and just got back or something. I hadn't talked to her in maybe a week or so, but I figured she was still playing those poker games with the other women and going dancing at the senior center with them upon occasion. She always told me that she was old and a widow, but she could still have fun sometimes. I just laughed along with her, letting her believe that she was happy even though I knew she never truly had been after my dad passed away.

As soon as I opened the door, a harsh smell of hot garbage or old, used kitty litter hit my nostrils, which was really out of character for my mother who kept a clean house for guests that could appear at any time, like me that night. It was almost too strong to walk through, but I was too curious to let it stop me. I wanted to know why something was different when all I longed for was things to be the same.

I followed the smell even though I tried to plug my nose to rid my senses of it, trying my best not to gag as I navigated through the house when I finally found what it was, even though I immediately wished I never had. It was my mother, sprawled out on the kitchen floor, hand on her heart, dead and disgusting.

Her eyes were shut but she somehow still seemed worried, like death hit her with a sudden shock, and it was all entirely too much. I dropped to my knees, not caring about the smell hardly at all anymore, and wrapped my hand around her cold one that already felt sort of decayed. I should've come sooner and it was all stupid Harry's fault. I knew it was bad to be thinking about him at a time like that, as I tried to share some kind of weird last moment with my mother before I had to bring the police and doctors in, but I couldn't help it. I wanted it to be him laying in the linoleum floor alone in that moment. I hated him so much because it was somehow his fault. He was the reason I'd been too busy to visit and he was the reason that I'd been too stressed to do anything besides focus on my work.

"I love you," I whispered even though I knew there would be no whisper back as I conjured up every last bit of strength I had in me to let out a blood curdling scream, loud enough to alert the neighbors that something was wrong. I didn't want to leave her so it was my only choice.

People came eventually, but I couldn't really tell you who. Everything was a blur, sitting there beside her then being torn away from her to be take outside where fumes wouldn't bother me and they could get to her easily. The police or nurses or someone took her away to a mortuary nearby, said that I could make arrangements whenever I was ready and that their thoughts and prayers were with me. One of the ladies that I recognized from poker night stayed on the porch with me for what seemed like days. She said that I could stay with her if I wanted to stay in town. I told her that I should probably just go back home. She said that she would take care of the arrangements if that's what I wanted. I told her if she made them I'd be in attendance. And just like that, it was over with. My mother was gone forever, cold and stiff in some body cellar and I was aching all over with a sense of mourning that I hadn't even decided to cry over yet.

I took a cab back home from the New York train station. It felt like I'd been traveling all day, the longest day of my life that only took a matter of seconds to turn that way, and my body was sticky with sadness and smelliness. I threw up in the floor of the taxi just remembering that my mother was dead and I held her that way. The driver didn't even notice, but I didn't care either way. I couldn't bring myself to care about anything in that moment.

I drug myself up the steps to the complex door then up the stairs to my actual number. It felt like my lungs could've  collapsed as I heaved my things up with me and tried my best not to be sick again. I was all the way in front of my door with my key in hand before I noticed Harry standing beside it. I couldn't help it. The bile I'd been holding back didn't want to contain itself anymore and spewed out of my mouth directly onto his expensive leather shoes. He shrieked with surprise but I just wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt, unlocked the door, and slammed it behind me with a loud click of the lock.

"Pen! Pen! What the hell?" he asked, banging his first against the door, but I pretended not to hear it, pushed the sound away from my ears and let it drown in the wood of my door. He kept pounding and pounding but I was immune to it. My heart hurt so intensely that that's all I could focus on anymore.

I sat in the bathtub, without water and fully clothed, just far enough away from the front room that I didn't even have to try not to tune in anymore. I knew he was still there, but I wasn't bothered. This was all his fault anyway. That's the only thing that could explain it in my grief stricken head and I didn't mind believing it. Stupid, stupid Harry, always ruining everything.

I finally let myself cry, the kind of cry that shakes your chest and makes your whole body ache, the kind of cry that makes you feel hungover afterwards, the kind of cry that makes your voice go away. I cried for my mother, for her death and how alone she was in it. I cried for myself because now I had to live without her. I cried for everything and everyone and hoped that Harry could hear it all.

"We are who we are until we die. There is no way out of the case we are born in until it decays and we're left to become the trees and spring flowers," -Styles, 1959