She agitated through the home, softly touching places that Kama had created. The altar in the front hallway, covered in incense ash. The collection of carved elephants under a framed broadsheet of the poem The Elephant is Slow to Mate, by D. H. Lawrence. The bowl full of stones with words of encouragement carved into them—bliss, joy, love, inspiration.

Dune had thought these woo-woo rocks were so corny. Now she pushed her hand into them and felt a memory of her mother coming, Kama stirring the stones, picking out an “energy” to carry with her throughout a day. She would often share it with Dune like a message from Jesus—who Kama referenced, called on, cursed and dismissed with equal fervor.

Dune picked a rock, just to see. Curiosity. The word was a bright furry green on a round rose quartz. She’d never seen this stone before. She placed her thumb on the y and it smudged. She wiped her thumb across the word and it came off completely. She shook her head, confused. “Cheap ass rock.”

Curiosity was a luxurious energy. She couldn’t afford it… There was little to discover that wouldn’t ultimately hurt her.

She felt in herself a frustration with her mother, as if Kama herself had misread Dune with the erroneous stone. It came back to her now, the friction of being seen through her mother’s exacting eyes. And then she felt angry with herself for remembering anything difficult about Kama.

She set the blank rock down and rubbed her shoulders, trying to push the energy off, or to contain herself.

She stepped into the kitchen, scanning for something specific, but unknown. The table was bare, the sink empty, the counters clean. The pots and pans hung dusty from the ceiling. The fridge groaned a bit, drawing her eyes towards it.

The light in the hall just beyond the fridge flickered. There, on the white wall that led from the kitchen out the back was the basement door, a towel stuffed along the bottom gap. The white paint had peeled off in strips, exposing the near-black of walnut underneath. Dune had helped that peeling along as a child, with her mother telling her to cut it out. In recent years, Kama had said she was planning to strip all that paint off and refinish the door.

Dune couldn’t remember the last time she’d been down those stairs. Kama only went down there for laundry and, since returning home, Dune had shamelessly left laundry in the realm of her mother’s work rather than fight for her right to do such a grown up thing. It was one of the ways Dune’s budding masculinity had shown itself.

Since Kama died, Dune hadn’t thought about laundry, had barely changed her clothing. Mama Vivian’s soiled drawers were disposable.

Looking now it struck her: she’d forgotten to tell her father what had happened.