Just as with Kama, as with everyone she had found, she knew she could not see what they saw. And maybe if she did, it would be the last sight of her life.

Dune touched Elouise’s hand and let the grief have her for a long moment. Elouise began to rock faster, just slightly. It was unclear when or why the rocking stopped and started. It happened in all of them, some continued synapse firing off, demanding motion.

When she could stand again, Dune was compelled to find Big Lou. He was either here somewhere and he knew, or he was gone and needed to know.

Or, said the small voice in her head. She ignored it.

She knocked on the front door. Big Lou didn’t come.

Cautiously, she stepped inside, a child entering a haunted house on a dare, not wanting to experience whatever was there. Except here the potential terrors were so much worse than plastic skeletons and cottony spider webs.

The kitchen was tiny, cluttered. There was a small pot on the stove with the heat on beneath it. Whatever had been inside the pot had burned to black. Dune turned the flame off. Had Elouise been making her tea?

The table had two plates of breakfast remains, indications of scrambled eggs, the edges of toast. Butter still in its wrapper sat next to one plate, the milk container warming in a puddle of sweat at the center of the table next to a jar of Michigan honey. Dune’s body instinctively moved to put the butter and milk in the fridge, gutted, doing this simple thing that Elouise would not do for herself or her husband ever again.

“Lou? Big Lou?”

Her voice moved through the house and brought back nothing. She stepped through the small kitchen to the only door, or rather doorframe, hinges still on one side though the door itself was long gone. Through the door was a short hallway going in both directions.

Directly in front of her on the hallway wall was Elouise’s altar to the dead, the foundation of which seemed to consist of wax from a million candles burnt over many years. Dune was moved to see a small picture of Kama laid in front of the hundreds of pictures, funeral programs, beads, bowls of regular water, bottles of Florida water, sticks of sage and incense. In the picture her mother was young, face smirking, hands outstretched like she was telling a crowd to stop applauding. There were oranges and apples on the altar, food for the spirit helpers. There were bundles of chicory root drying, hanging down over the altar. Dune wanted to say a prayer, but could conjure no words. She just touched her fingers over her heart.