Demeter gave him a slow, sideways, don’t-fuck-with-me look. She turned back to Duncan’s daughter. “Your daddy will always be inside you,” she told her. “You’re a little piece of him.” She brought the girl’s pale cheek to her lips. With her hair loose in the wind, she looked like a painting: Madonna with another woman’s child, in a white peasant dress and hiking boots, the fields behind her clean yellow waves. She carried Annie to the other side of the gaping hole.

Kay watched them go. “Annie doesn’t understand all this,” she said. “Maybe Demeter can explain it better than I can.”

“I don’t think Demeter understands,” Hank said. “I think she’s on another planet.”

“She understands,” Kay said. She shoved her hands in her jeans pockets under the poncho. “At least as much as we do.”

Trying to understand had made Hank miserable and afraid. They’d hired a lawyer to investigate the accident, but there was no one to sue except Hank. There wasn’t any insurance because they could never afford it; Duncan had always said his luck was insurance enough. Kay was left with nothing, and she was holding up better than he was.

More cars and trucks arrived, dusty from the drive up from town, and people—thirty or forty now—gathered in the field. There was no minister, so everyone looked to Kay to start. She stood near the head of the grave.

“Listen, I know you all loved him,” she began. She wrapped her arms around her poncho to hold it down in the wind. “He’d be real glad you all came out.” Her face started to screw up and she wiped her hand across her nose. “I don’t really know what to say,” she said. “So—Annie made a tape yesterday. It’s her talking to her dad.” She pushed a button on a cassette player, and Annie’s four-year-old voice carried over the grave, sounding like she was stuck in a box, but loud enough and clear enough.

“Daddy, we love you,” the voice said.

Released by Demeter, Annie dodged through legs to get to Kay, and pressed her face into her mother’s thighs. On the tape, you could hear Kay saying something muffled in the background.

“I have my fish, but they’re not swimming,” the taped Annie said.

“Duncan got her these little plastic fish,” Kay explained, stroking her daughter’s hair. “Do you hear your voice, sweetie?”

The men moved in to help pick up the pine box, and Hank braced himself to lower it down. It bumped against the edges and he felt concerned for Duncan, then incredulous that Duncan could be inside. On the tape, Annie kept talking about fish. The box touched the bottom and they all looked at it in the hole.

“Oh, God,” Kay said.

“I’m going to be a good girl, Daddy,” Annie said on the tape.