No funeral but two weeks after he died, a remembrance gathering at his house. Friends from the river valley came, as well as Fraser, and Nora. Jody was there, and cousins and teachers and students from the school where Red taught. They made sure it was a celebration. There was a ukulele, a guitar and a French horn. They stood together and kicked at crisp leaves and told stories, releasing the papery smell of dying leaves into the air. Beers and joints were passed around a fire while the sun sank behind the trees, while the light, palpable, changed to gold and then indigo dusk. From someplace distant, the howling and yip of a coyote. So distant that its veracity was undetermined and some of the more drunken of the group speculated that it could have been a spirit howl, that it could have been Red. That solace, that tendency for the bereaved to see signs, to take ownership, in and of everything: this was meant for us, this snowstorm, this sunrise, this song that played on the radio at just the right time. Hand in hand, because Red would have loved that, hand in hand the friends sat still and listened, cock-eared, while the fire snapped and single leaves silently spiralled to the ground around them. It was enough. When the air became too cold, they moved inside and continued to drink, and many went home until only a few were left, and enough time had passed that someone suggested they swim in the river while the sun came up and do the ashes. It was Fraser who first stripped down to his underwear and ran into the water. His hoots echoed north and south up the bank, frightening a pair of finches off their perch. He dove down and came back up dancing, water spraying off his beard and his long hair. Someone else ran in, and then someone else, and Anouk, hugging a cardboard canister to her body, joined them. Down to her underpants, she stepped in fast and walked out until the water was up to her thighs, and lifted the lid of the canister. Inside, a sealed plastic bag. She opened this and looked inside to the ashy brown grit that was her father. His eyes, his hair, his teeth. His bones, skin, nose, fingers, heart, lungs.

‘Do I do handfuls, or . . . ?’ She looked to the others in the water. Her body spasmed with cold and her teeth clacked.

‘All in one,’ said Fraser.

She emptied the canister with a swing of the arm, and the fragments of her father arced through the air and landed on the surface of the water, and seemed to hang suspended there for a moment before they sank. Absorbed by river.

‘Did you get it all?’ Fraser asked. ‘Make sure you get it all.’

She pulled out the plastic bag and turned it upside down and shook out whatever was left. A little drunk, deliriously tired, she said, to no one in particular: ‘I would like you all to do the same for me one day.’