Bab collapsed into the nearest chair. Her mouth opened to say no, distraught. A tidal wave of questions poured out, flooding the kitchen, too loud. No one knew how to be tender anymore, it was all interrogation.

“I don’t know. It’s not clear. They think it might have been this syndrome?” Dune shook her head and sat down across the table, tired.

Bab shared her last memory of Kama, precious now—a random conversation that didn’t fare well in the retelling. She said, “Kama was always so brave.”

Dune thought this was incredibly stupid. The hierarchy of grief is measured in words and silence. The closer the death, the less words can hold it.

Unable to help herself, Bab came over and pressed Dune’s face into her chest for an awkward hug. The woman was somehow skinny and pudgy at the same time, such that Dune could feel the chest plate between long soft breasts that hadn’t known a bra in decades. Bab smelled like dandruff shampoo and fake lavender soap. Dune made herself tiny, but didn’t push away, trying to keep some kindness together.

Finally, she said, “Thank you for coming. Mama Vivian needs you.”

While Bab carried her inquisitive sorrow up the stairs to visit the elder, Dune escaped to the backyard. The dog was there again, as if he had been waiting for her. He sat close enough to be a comfort and she decided, officially, to call him Dog.

Dune could only handle a few moments of news at a time. Anchors spoke of the syndrome in the careless, drastic manner of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. In absence of facts, they offered fearful possibilities, theories, tweets from local politicians and performative condolences. Fox News had apparently shown video footage of “grief-stricken victims” the first few days, and that had led to massive backlash from families and local activists.

Dune was steeped in Kama’s annual remembering of September 11, how she had seen and heard people falling from the buildings on her television, unable to look away or cover her ears. Her mother said it had taken her days to feel ashamed, to realize that her morbid curiosity had been someone else’s terrified loved one, dying.

Dune felt differently. The disrespect was the death itself. The coverage could not make it worse, it was already the worst thing that had ever happened.

Turning off her radio, in the quiet of the house, she could still feel the panic of the city growing. Reporters and neighbors had come knocking, but she couldn’t seem to move from the bed or the couch to open the door.