Roxy’s voice came out of nowhere, and William couldn’t help but smile. It’s exactly what she would say if she were standing next to him, followed by a twist of her finger to his rib cage or a gentle tug on his earlobe. While his parents showered him with compassion and his grandparents taught him resilience, it was Roxy who infused in him the importance of laughing—and making an obscene gesture towards—the face of adversity.

Don’t try and fool me, Willie boy, he imagined her saying, picturing her in her favorite T-shirt, which read “Squad Goals” with a picture of the Golden Girls beneath. I know all you truly want to read is that magazine with the floozy on the hood of that Mustang. Just remember: Venereal disease is the gift that keeps on giving.

The last was actually one of her favorite sayings to him, whispered both before he left for prom and when that picture of him passed out cold nearly naked in a girl’s bed on the third floor of his freshman dorm set social media on fire for a solid week. His family had been horrified. Roxy had simply set it as the screen saver on her phone.

When three tabloid reporters were busted recording his high school graduation, Roxy had snuck outside to smear Vaseline on the inside of their door handles. After he was relentlessly taunted in the fifth grade by the Jolton twins for being the redheaded-stepchild-from-space, Roxy sat him down and made him repeat one saying until he got it right: “Hey Joltons: My other ride is your mom.” When he delivered the line while sitting on his bike after baseball practice, even the twins laughed. The teasing stopped.

When he mooned an entire trove of photographers who showed up at his lacrosse tournament, Roxy taped the published photograph on her refrigerator.

Find the humor, kiddo. Make ‘em laugh. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got.

OK Roxy, he thought. What’s that runner’s magazine with the columnist that shares funny stories about crapping his pants during race day…?

He scanned the covers and saw his own face.

He flinched as if a snake had just dropped from the ceiling and landed on the pop star with whom he shared the cover of Hello! magazine. She got the full-page treatment, drunkenly getting into a car with the words, “Rock Bottom!” Tucked up in the right-hand corner, next to the magazine’s famous red-and-white lettering, a photograph showed him wearing a black tie with a solemn expression. “WILLIAM FOUND ALIVE?” the headline asked.

The tie had been one of Grandpa Tom’s. “He’d have liked you to have worn it,” Nanna had told him, her age-spotted hands trembling as she helped him with the knot before the funeral. “Your grandpa had classic style.”

He’d taken her hands in his own and held them until they had both stopped shaking.