Jaret came out of their home with two suitcases as Gerald was sharing the news, his small ’fro wrapped tight under a bandana. He added, “Yeah, this shit is bananas. That storm yesterday? I went to unload at Tech and all the sickies by the window were drenched. They don’t even move!”

Gerald caught Dune’s eye and apologized with a shoulder, steering Jaret away. Dune waved at their backs and drifted back into the house. The next time she looked out Kama’s bedroom window, the van was gone.

The next day she heard steps come and go on her porch without ringing the bell. She opened the door to find a notice folded into the screen.

9 PM CURFEW. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

Mayor de Costa has imposed a 9 pm curfew for Metro Detroit.

All Residents: Stay in your homes and within the city limits until the Syndrome H-8 situation is contained.

Food distribution shuttle schedules are up at detroit.gov.

Dune scoffed and let the notice slip from her fingers back out onto the porch, closing the door. Home wasn’t safer than anywhere else.

The house was sacred now.

Dune had never been oriented towards sacred things. She had the gift of a magical mother and had coasted on that, indulging secular interests, taking risks of spirit, knowing she was prayed over. She’d always known, without witnessing them, that rituals were being offered in her name daily, that her mother had surrounded Dune’s life with protection.

Now every room Dune floated through was full of her mother’s absence, the rightness of her mother, the things that could not be seen in Kama’s living body, but beamed from her ghost. Kama’s rage was more deserved, her rants more pure, her entire being so clear in retrospect.

This was the place Kama had crafted in order to become a wife to her husband. Dune loved their love story—Kama had fallen in love with Brendon the first time she saw him ask a question in a meeting. Before Brendon, Kama had never dated anyone who wasn’t Black, or anyone shorter than her. But he was handsome, thorough, interested in the world around him. Losing his father so young had grown him up quickly.

Dune knew that Kama had grown up in an abusive household, her father beating her mother. Kama and her brothers had been brutalized when they tried to intervene, or find any aspect of themselves of which he didn’t approve. When he wasn’t hitting them, Kama’s father was funny, sweet and well respected in the New Afrikan community. They had a tenuous relationship—teasing and funny when she was young and he could joke her into forgetting the most recent terror. And then colder and colder as she learned his weaknesses, mapped the dangers of his internal terrain…as she lost respect for him.