If the one with words, if his family was looking through her data for him, they wouldn’t know for sure if it was this blurry shadow or the other guy. She needed more distinction.

Dune went through Brendon’s office boxes in the basement corner, looking for something she slightly remembered him having—a polaroid camera. Or it might have just been a normal camera distinct from a phone? Either way it was something old and higher quality, but she couldn’t quite remember which and she couldn’t find it.

She went upstairs and opened Kama’s closet, scanning the boxes stacked up the left side. There were three boxes of Brendon’s things that Kama liked to have close by. Dune touched her fingers to the top box, the cardboard abused, mended at the corners with duct tape. She had a fleeting sense of kinship with these boxes, leftover and full, carrying priceless forgettable objects from other lives.

Something made her pause in her pawing at the boxes.

She turned away from the closet and looked at the bone bed, framed by ashes. Light was pouring in the room strangely again, a horizontal line across the top half of the bed, the vases of mother ash shining.

Take Kama downstairs. This idea occurred to her as if spoken by another. But within the walls of her mind. She listened for another moment, waited. Was that her own thought?

She shook her head, but crossed the creaky bedroom floor and squatted next to the vase on the left side of the bed. She touched it gently and then slid down against it, hugging it, feeling it still part of her mother’s sick body.

As she stood up, she hitched the vase full of Kama against her body and carried it down the hall. Slowly, stepping backwards and resting the vase on the step above her when she needed to, she got it downstairs to the basement. Then she went and got the other vase, leaving the bones hidden on her mother’s pillow. On the second trip, she paused at the altar and stuffed the envelope of money from Paulie Vereen under her shirt.

In the basement, she slowly pushed the vases under the card tables, into the middle, until, standing, she could barely see them. On an instinct, she got on her knees and half crawled, half scooted herself under. She pulled the tops off the vases, letting Kama breathe.

“That’s the last time I carry you,” she grunted, backing out from under the tables, clapping her hands clean while catching her breath.