She couldn’t though. It was nearly dark. And even though the line between sick and dead was negligible these days, she wasn’t really ready to meet a dead stranger in the dark. And what if someone else had gone in the open window already and felt defensive about the territory?

Dune wrote down the notes she could from the window: brown hand on knee, looks like an older man’s hand. Black pants. She got the address, the date. That would have to do. She sat in her car for a long time before she could pull off, feeling like a coward.

It was Halloween.

She went in her parents’ office, moving down through the small closet until she found a dusty box that said HOLIDAY in block letters down the side. Soon, half her face was painted like a grinning white skeleton. She went upstairs and made teasing eyebrows at Mama Vivian.

“If this isn’t our day, I don’t know what is,” she said.

She painted her grandmother’s face, moving the brush softly, slowly over the elder’s skin. Did Vivian nearly smile?

Dune slipped close to Mama Vivian and took a picture of the two of them. She didn’t know who to share it with, but was happy to have it.

Half-masked, she continued with a regular day.

She made black beans and oatmeal for breakfast. She thought of the breakfasts she wanted. Real eggs, fried over medium with sea salt and pepper. With bacon, and chicken apple sausages, smoked salmon, buttered toast, all of it smothered in hollandaise. And french toast and pancakes, quiche, frittata, things that came with and from eggs.

She needed to find some chickens come spring, maybe from Ohio if she could get past the quarantine boundary. Twice. “Going rogue.”

She checked Mama Vivian’s adult diaper. She had initially felt guilt at not doing this until after breakfast, making her grandmother sit in it, but the truth was she couldn’t eat for a while afterwards. Mama Vivian would barely swallow water or Ensure now. She loved the screwdrivers still, but she didn’t have much waste to process these days.

Dune went about her chores and tasks feeling a deep exhaustion, a soreness in her joints. Her body’s changing weight was equal parts comforting and taxing on her skeleton. At the end of the day, she drew a very hot bath, hissed her way down into it and sat, feeling her pores open up, releasing everything. Her mask melted off, floating white on the water’s surface around her. She dried her hands on a towel from the floor and picked up the top book on the pile next to the tub, flipping pages until the water was cool.