Larry Harvey Jr. was in the middle of his ninth day of living in a world without his baby girl, Autumn Sky Harvey. On this day, although he wasn’t feeling up for it, he went to a bar in Bowleys Quarters for what everyone had decided to call a celebration of her life.

That’s the way she had wanted it. She told him so six months ago, during one of their frequent conversations about her mother, Robin, who had died suddenly three summers ago at age 45.

“I don’t want to be laid out for people to see,” Autumn said to her father. “Mom looked terrible in there. Just cremate me and celebrate me. I don’t want anyone crying.”

And then, a jolt: “You know I’m going to die before you.”

Larry changed the subject, but her certainty haunted him.

On July 7, Baltimore County Police discovered the bodies of Autumn, 29, and her grandmother, Iona Sellers, 75, in their Middle River home.

Police ruled the deaths a homicide and said each had suffered “apparent trauma to the upper body.” Detectives have revealed little since, saying they are investigating the circumstances surrounding this case.

“The police said they have a ton of tips,” Larry said. “They said they’ve never had so many tips come in for a case.”

Three years have brought the sudden loss of three generations of women in one family. Autumn’s mother, Robin Spring Saunders Coleman, complained of chest pain before her heart stopped. She died June 27, 2021.

Old Soul

Tavern in the Quarters had become Autumn’s go-to place since moving in with her grandmother shortly after her mother died.

It was a short walk from her close friend Brandon Morningstar’s home and became the proverbial place where everyone knew her name.

That was the last place her friends saw her, happy as can be.

Larry arrived to the celebration along with his parents, Larry Sr. and Mary; his sister, Shannon Harvey Mclaughlin; and Shannon’s sons, Eugene and Devin. The bar was new to him, a place filled with characters that had existed only in his daughter’s stories.

He met some of her friends for the first time, gratefully receiving their hugs and applying their conversations as a salve.

Autumn got her wish on Sunday. Everyone celebrated. But they also cried. She didn’t get her way about that.

A soundtrack of 1980s pop songs filled the tent sheltering the patio: George Michael, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna. Old songs were Autumn’s jam. So were 1980s movies like “The Breakfast Club.”

She was always an old soul, her friends and relatives said, starting with the way she cared for her little brother, Gage, when she was a teenager. She often toted her sibling, 13 years younger, on her hip, remarking years later to Larry, “Look, Daddy, one hip is bigger than the other. Probably from carrying Gage.”

She called one of her best friends, Ali Favaro, “ma’am,” even though they were the same age.

“Mam, I had a wild night,” she texted Ali at 3:02 a.m. July 6, in what seems to be the last sign she was alive. She appended a laughing emoji to the message.

‘Something was wrong’

“Whatever she did, she enjoyed her last night,” Favaro said, starting to cry. “I didn’t get to talk to her about it.”

Earlier on what would be the last day of Autumn’s life, she and Ali swam at Ali’s parents’ home in Bel Air. That evening, a Friday night, they went to the tavern, and Brandon joined them.

The trio and others made plans to float on inner tubes on the river the next day. Autumn never showed up and never called.

“I knew something was wrong,” Ali said. “I hear from her every day by 9 a.m., every single day, even if it’s about something stupid, ‘I’m wearing a purple dress today.’”

Maybe, Brandon suggested, Autumn’s phone had stopped working.

Ali tried to reach her Sunday morning and couldn’t. A mutual friend called the police and requested a welfare check. Officers arrived just before 10 a.m.

A butterfly mother

On one of the tables at the celebration of Autumn’s life, the family set up a board of photographs of Autumn from all ages of her life, with the people she loved most: her dad, her mom, her brother Gage.

Next to a candle and her high school portrait was a bin of rubber wristbands — purple, her favorite color — with her name and a tiny butterfly printed on them.

Autumn was more than simply fond of butterflies. To her, Robin, her mother, was a butterfly: A beautiful creature, transformed, flitting and fluttering about.

After Robin’s death, Autumn was plagued by nightmares and panic attacks. Larry bought Autumn a butterfly pendant to soothe her.

“Whenever you feel upset, whenever you want to talk to your mom, she’s with you,” Larry said. “Right here. She’s your butterfly.”

When she lost the necklace, Larry bought her another one — and a second as a backup, just in case. Her friends never saw her without it.

Robin had been Larry’s first, and maybe his only, love. She was his sister Shannon’s best friend and 16 when they met. Larry was five years older.

Shannon brought Robin over to her house one fall day.

“I saw, to me, the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen,” Larry said. They quickly became a couple.

One day, while Larry was at work at the lumber yard, Robin called from a payphone. She was pregnant. He was 23, and she was 18. Just like the day the two met, the call came on a brilliant fall day in September. When they found out they were having a girl, Larry suggested the name Autumn Sky.

The romance was bumpy: They got married, but it lasted less than a year. For about a decade, their relationship was stuck in a cycle of breaking up and getting back together. Larry never remarried, but Robin remarried several times; one of those pairings resulted in Autumn’s brother, Gage.

The Harvey Castle

Larry and Robin shared custody of Autumn, but she spent most of her time with her dad and his family.

The Harvey Castle was Larry Sr. and Mary’s house in Middle River. Autumn’s Aunt Shannon lived there with her sons. And that’s where a young Autumn spent most of her days while her father worked at the Costco in White Marsh, driving a forklift.

The kids also had a neighborhood dad, Tom Morningstar, the father of Autumn’s close friend Brandon. “Mr. Tom,” as the Harvey kids called him, worked nights, so he was often home during the day and the adult in charge by default.

“They were all good, respectful kids,” Morningstar said.

Robin was a constant — but complicated — presence in her daughter’s life, friends and relatives said.

Shannon said that as Autumn’s aunt, “I tried to be there for her,” while never taking away from Robin’s status as her mother.

“Autumn had a lot of issues trying to deal with her mom wanting to be life of the party,” Larry said. “She loved Autumn … but Autumn always needed more attention from her mom.”

Larry worked to convey to Autumn the love that Robin struggled to express. He told Autumn that her mother would say, ‘Did we not create the perfect child?’ and add, “If that doesn’t give you an idea of how your mom felt about you, I don’t know what will.”

Peace after loss

The Harveys stayed close to Robin, who was a regular visitor in the family home until the day she died.

Robin had been living with her mother, Iona, when she fell ill. Days after taking a vaccine that she told relatives had been required for her job,, she developed a blood clot. Some in the family believe the shot was to blame.

After Robin’s sudden death, Autumn moved in with Iona, her grandmother, to keep her company. She slept in her mother’s bedroom, the same one Robin had as a teenager when she and Larry met. Even the paint color — yellow — had not changed.

Autumn was devoted to Iona, even though she told friends it was stressful and that her grandmother really “plucked on her nerves.” Iona and Gage were her remaining connections to her mother.

Almost three years after Robin’s death, Autumn seemed to find peace with her loss. She had settled into a new job, doing administrative work from home for a radiology lab. She had the kind of friends who always said yes when she spontaneously invited herself over for dinner.

Her father and the Harveys were a mile away.

She wanted to be a mother, she told friends. But in the meantime she reveled in Gage, Ali’s 10-year-old daughter, and her cousin Devin’s toddler daughter, who is named Camden Sky in a nod to Autumn Sky.

A funeral, a celebration

And Autumn always had a place to go — the tavern.

A wood slat fence, concrete pavers, a fire pit, picnic tables, a string of lights, an outdoor bar. Weekend or weekday, this was her place. It was the only choice for the celebration of her life.

There was a funeral last Monday for Autumn’s grandmother, Iona, who was laid to rest at Holly Hill Memorial Gardens.

There won’t be one for Autumn, per her wishes. Larry will bring her ashes to his home, and put them next to those of her mother’s, together always.

Larry is grateful now for the dark conversation he had with Autumn about how she wanted to be mourned. But it also troubles him.

“It haunts me,” he said. “It made me feel, like, did she know something? Is it destiny? Did God tell her something? She just said it like she knew.”

An earlier version of this story said that Robin worked at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. The institute said it has no record of Robin Coleman having worked there.