“How’s your mom holding up today, Ms. Price?” The doorman of my building held the elevator door and let me pass him.

“Not so great. She’s been having night terrors since my dad…” I trailed off.

“I figured that’s what had you out so late, miss. Let me know if you need anything. I’m here for you.” He patted my shoulder, and his kindness nearly crushed me. Since my dad had passed two nights ago, the doorman at my building had shown me more kindness than anyone.

The Prices may be one of the most prestigious names in the city, but most of the family had died out. It was only my mom, brother, and me now that my dad was gone. We’d never been a close family. My dad worked too much, and my mom was busy with her charity events and dinner parties, but somehow, without him, the world seemed dimmer.

When the elevator opened to my modern apartment, windows overlooked all of Park Avenue and the verdant green of the park beyond it. It was breathtaking—my father’s twenty-first birthday present to me. Before I’d even had a chance to redesign the kitchen, he’d been diagnosed with an aggressive metastatic tumor. His radiation and chemotherapy had started the following week at Lenox Hill Hospital.

I’d sat at his side every day while they’d pumped toxins into his system and watched him lose himself to his illness while my mother avoided anything too heavy from day one. And my brother, Matt, hadn’t even come home from school in California.

I was the only one left to hold his hand through his illness.

The disease wasn’t like any sickness; it was a slow and steady decline. For nearly two years, he fought—we fought together. I’d spent hours each week researching new treatments while avant-garde international doctors ran cutting-edge trials and therapies. Many had visited my father at his bedside. None had been able to fix the problem.

My father was dying. We would need to prepare ourselves for that.

I’d spent hours with the grief counselor in the days leading up to my father’s passing while my mother sobbed to her psychiatrist that she needed a stronger prescription for her anxiety.

I was losing my father and watching my mother fall apart at the same time. While the last two years had been the hardest of my life, the last two days took the cake.

While Mom was drugging herself into a permanent mental vacation, I was planning my father’s visitation. He’d explicitly stated in his will that he wanted no funeral—only a visitation.

His passing had made the top page of the obituaries in The Times. Going without a funeral was nearly unheard of for someone of his stature. Hosting a visitation would be required, at the bare minimum.