The Unfuneral could only work by candlelight. I carried the stones my parents left me in a leather pouch and brought trowels and candles. The sounds of boom boxes and food trucks dimmed as I carried my candle toward a shadowy spot that we marked with a survey flag. The flag was often bent down to the ground when we returned each year, but no one bothered to take it. That night, it was at a forty-five-degree angle. Sophie was there in her long cape. I lit a candle for her. We didn’t need to speak. I gave her half of the stones.

“How about I dig part of the hole and then you finish it?” I asked.

“Sure.”

In years past, we dug together and, nervous about getting too close to each other, we ended up creating a shallow, oblong shape.

I dug straight down and pulled up clots of earth. I smelled the wet freshness. My parents’ bodies had never been recovered. When I told Margot to bring them marigolds and Coca-Cola, the gesture was symbolic, as are all gestures toward death. I let Sophie dig until the hole was about two feet deep and then we dropped in the stones, one by one. We buried them and circled the plot.

I found myself shouting, “Mom, Dad, Mom, Dad,” and Sophie joined in.

I liked watching her get weird in the candlelight.

We dug out the stones and sat on the cool ground with our hands touching them. I closed my eyes. There was my mom, making me puppy chow in a big plastic bag, her hair stuffed into a baseball cap. And my dad, sitting me up on his broad desk and showing me the cracks of oolitic limestone through a magnifying glass. And they stretched, stretched across time, so that they were not stuck in these moments, and we were not stuck in the present moment, missing them.

I was singing to Alice in the kitchen when Aiden walked in, wearing a pastel T-shirt and cutoff jean shorts. While he often looked hot and pensive in his photos, I’d never seen him look this relaxed, like he’d lived inside a Korean spa for a week or two, eating nothing but kimchi and going into the hottest bath, where they cook eggs.

“I have to tell you something.”

His face was shifty. His aqua shorts were tight along the outside of his packer, and his mesh running shoes were so hip they were unbranded. He pretended to examine one of the herb bundles overhead.

I raised my eyebrows.

“I happened to look up Rachel on the Gram after you told me you two were breaking up.”

I didn’t say anything.

The words commitment, your kink phase, partnership, cuddling, never thought I would, financial precarity, stability, and ultimately marry her came floating by me.