“Maybe she’s with you? Maybe you already knew, maybe you’re together? I just thought … Are you?”

She held her breath, her eyes searching the air, the half-finished walls, the inanimate model, anything for a sign. Nothing. Nothing moved in the room.

“I hope you’re together. I’m sorry ... ”

Dune felt foolish. She didn’t believe in this enough to make it happen. She pressed her hand to her chest, wishing she had the kind of faith that gave people visions, or second sight, or whatever it was called when you saw the light of your ancestors around you. Rumors, maybe grief-stricken lies, she understood that.

She just wanted, so much, for one more moment, to be a daughter.

On the wall was a shelf of supplies. Dune slipped around the northwest corner of the city. She thought of Kama, divining her rituals. Dune held her left hand, her heart hand, up before the shelf.

She was her father’s child. She needed a something-to-do. She picked up the old jasmine tea tin full of pre-cut slivers of paper, the rubber cement, a pen and some paper clips. Her father had been prepared for every possible need.

Dune wrote “Kama Tutashinda Chin, birth date April 6, 1975” on a small sign, added her mother’s death date on the back in tiny numbers, and fused it to a toothpick flagpole. She pressed it into the gray foam lawn of their model home.

She felt another chill when she stepped back from the model. She thought maybe haunting was just what ghosts did when everyone they loved was gone. Maybe no one would ever come to this basement after Dune. But if they did, if anyone ever unearthed this home and wanted to tell a story of the city, of humanity, of a family, they would know this was a living place.

chapter five

Dune’s parents were strolling before her on the Detroit River Walk, no other humans around. The water was disturbed, crashing over itself, splashing up over the railing, onto the concrete. The sun cast a greenish tinge, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. No wind moved the air, but the river raged.

Dune called out to Kama and Brendon to wait for her. She tried to catch up to them, but they were walking too fast, faster than she could go. With all her effort, she was slowing down. She yelled out their names, but she couldn’t get her voice loud enough. She yelled and yelled.

Her parents finally turned to look at her.

Brendon looked like he always had, except that his hair was bright white, as it had never had a chance to be in life. Kama’s head was wrapped, as usual, her age hidden in her supple black skin. She had no mouth. Her eyes were big and she was shaking her head, holding up her hands up to make Dune stop.