Even now Dune felt too far from Mama Vivian, sitting here. She was never sure if her grandmother actually understood her when she said where she was going, how long she’d be gone. The wandering eyes that punctuated Mama Vivian’s time seemed to be looking for her across the city miles now. Elouise nodded as if wanting to die was the most logical response to this moment.

Dune asked, “What about you?”

“Oh fine. Fine. Lou wants to go while we still can.”

When Elouise spoke of her husband, she always smiled as if he amused her, especially when she spoke of their disagreements. Dune doubted Big Lou had won a single argument in their entire relationship and suspected that was why the marriage worked. Elouise gestured around her, adding, “Most everyone else already left. But I’m not leaving until everyone can.”

Dune nodded. She expected no less from Elouise, although she couldn’t say what kind of justice it would be to abandon the city en masse, vs staying and dying.

Elouise leaned back to look at Dune’s face as she asked, “You staying too?”

Dune shrugged with her mouth. “I’ve been gathering stories.” As the words were coming out she didn’t know how to explain what she was doing down in the basement. Research? Building a model cemetery? Some sacred unspeakable ritual? She visualized the notes and images she had started placing in columns on the wall, the scaled-up model of the city, the maps.

Yes, among other possible things, these were stories, gathered.

“That is so necessary! How else we going to learn about this epidemic if we don’t really study it?” Elouise was so earnest in her responses, so authentic that it made Dune feel something flutter in her through the fog.

They were not dead. She was here with her beloved auntie Elouise, who wasn’t berating her for how she had been in her grief, who always seemed to dance as she spoke, moving the hundred beaded necklaces around her neck into a rocking motion, hands shaping and reshaping the air.

“Who are you interviewing?”

Dune sucked the inside of her lower lip. Admitting this might mark her for madness. “I am listening to people who get sick.”

Elouise’s face gathered up in a question and she lifted herself from the wall and turned towards Dune, as if this was too large a thing to say side by side. Dune felt the cool air where they’d been touching. Elouise grabbed Dune’s small shoulders in her big working hands, searching the girl’s face for miracles. “They talk to you? You can talk to them?”

Dune shook her head. “I don’t think they hear me. I just grab the words they’re saying.”

Elouise let her go, confusion twisting her face. Dune felt amazed by how wide the range of Elouise’s expressions were, each one full volume. “What you mean?”