It was a morbid honor, being one of the first people to get sick.

Dune thought Kama might have been interested if it became a historical note, but then couldn’t think of any pioneers of sickness. The first people with a plague were never celebrated, even though that was such a frightening, innocent position, to die with so little context.

Hours after Dune had retrieved her mother from the yard, a police officer and an infectious disease specialist came to the door, two men, both wearing gloves and white masks over their mouths. They asked to speak to Kama, having heard from Dr. Natasha Rogers that she was the first person documented with these symptoms, which had now shown up in double digits. They expressed the requisite bare minimum sympathy when Dune said that Kama was dead, but didn’t leave. In fact, their questions came faster.

She died yesterday morning.

Here, in her room.

The hospital wouldn’t keep her, we couldn’t afford it.

I haven’t been on my phone…

She was talking, in the kitchen, and she stopped talking and froze.

Sure, right through there.

That was it. She didn’t seem to sleep, she wet herself and…nothing.

She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t drink. She choked if I tried…

Her face just looked really sad.

No, I don’t have a death certificate.

I cremated her.

This flummoxed the pair. There was some back and forth between them about whether what she had done was legal, Dune said nothing. The officer was pretty sure it wasn’t legal, the specialist said it was smart. Both were unclear of what to do next. They advised her to do what she was already doing, staying home.

She only asked them one question, “Are the hospitals still turning people away?”

What had Kama been saying? Somehow loud, but also under her breath.

Dune sat in the kitchen after the men left, trying to remember. She had seen a movie where someone was able to see things in their memory that they hadn’t registered in real time, but she couldn’t remember if it was a documentary or something fantastical.

Kama had been pressed in here, between chair and sink. Dune had her father’s flat hips, her ass didn’t touch the chair behind her unless she worked at it. She missed the fat of Kama’s body, missed the way life had pushed out of her mother in a million obstinate directions.

Dune turned to face the big table, to lean her weight on something, and there was Mama Vivian, in the doorway. Without words, her wide eyes and lifted brow said she was afraid, she didn’t understand what had happened, was happening.

Why was Kama gone? Why had her granddaughter burned her daughter-in-law in the yard? What did the police want?