I need to liquefy into the earthy colored, crunchy grass that the Colonel and I step on as we quietly advance back to our room. His feet are so huge, excessively enormous for his short body, and the new conventional sneakers he wears since his old ones were peed in look practically like jokester shoes. I think about Rosy’s flip-flops sticking to her blue toes as we swung on the swing somewhere near the lake. Will the coffin be open? Could an undertaker re-make her grin? I could in any case hear her colloquialism: “This is so fun, yet I’m so drowsy. To proceed?” Nineteenth-century evangelist Henry Ward Beecher’s final words were “Presently comes the secret.” The artist Dylan Thomas, who enjoyed a decent beverage at any rate as much as Rosy, said, “I’ve had eighteen straight bourbons. I do accept that is a record,” before biting the dust. Ruddy’s most loved was writer Eugene O’Neill: “Brought into the world in a lodging, and—God damn it—passed on in a lodging.” Even auto crash casualties now and then possess energy for final words. Princess Diana said, “Gracious God. What’s occurred?” Movie star James Dean said, “They must see us,” not long before hammering his Porsche into another vehicle. I know such countless final words. Be that as it may, I won’t ever know hers. I’m a few stages before him before I understand that the Colonel has tumbled down. I pivot, and he is lying all over. “We need to get up, Roger. We need to get up. We simply need to get to the room.” The Colonel diverts his face from the beginning me and looks at me dead without flinching and says, “I. Can’t. Relax.” But he can inhale, and I know this since he is hyperventilating, breathing as though attempting to blow air once more into the dead. I get him, and he takes hold of me and starts crying, again saying, “I’m so grieved,” again and again. We have never embraced, me and the Colonel, and there is not a lot to say, since he should be heartbroken, and I just set my hand on the back of his head and say the solitary genuine thing. “I’m grieved, as well.” two days after I didn’t rest that evening. Sunrise was delayed in coming, and in any event, when it did, the sun sparkling brilliant through the blinds, the broken-down radiator couldn’t keep us warm, so the Colonel and I sat silently on the love seat. He read the chronological registry. The prior night, I’d conquered the virus to call my folks, and this time when I said, “Hello, it’s Aaron,” and my mother replied with, “What’s up? Is everything OK?” I could securely reveal to her no, all was not well. My father got the line at that point. “What’s going on?” he inquired. “Try not to shout,” my mom said. “I’m not hollering; it’s simply the telephone.” “All things considered, talk calmer,” she said, thus it took some time before I could say anything, and afterward once I could, it took some effort to say the words altogether—my companion Rosy passed on in an auto accident. I gazed at the numbers and messages scribbled on the divider by the telephone. “Goodness, Aaron,” Mom said. “I’m so grieved, Aaron. Would you like to return home?” “No,” I said. “I need to be here…I can barely handle it,” which was still mostly obvious I thought, from the outset, that it was just shouting. Yet, after a couple of breaths, I saw a mood. Also, after a couple of additional, I understood that the Colonel was saying words. He was shouting, “I’m so grieved.” Madame Marine snatched his hand. “You have nothing to be upset for, Roger. There was nothing you might have done.” But if lone she knew. Also, I just remained there, taking a gander at the scene, pondering her not dead, and I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around to see the Eagle, and I said, “I believe she’s playing a stupid trick,” and he said, “No, Aaron, no, I’m grieved,” and I felt the warmth in my cheeks and said, “She’s great. She could pull this off,” and he said, “I saw her. I’m heartbroken.” “What occurred?” “Someone was setting off sparklers in the forested areas,” he said, and I shut my eyes tight, the ineluctable truth within reach: I had executed her. “I went out after them, and I surmise she drove off grounds. It was late. She was on I-65 only south of downtown. A truck had jackknifed, impeding the two paths. A squad car had quite recently gotten to the scene. She hit the cruiser while never turning. I accept she more likely than not been exceptionally inebriated. The police said they smelled liquor.”