We didn’t bury my father. My aunt didn’t want him anywhere near her sister. Since she was the one in charge of the arrangements, she had him cremated and stuck in a cardboard box. The box went in the storage unit in her condo building, where it stayed for the next twelve years.

I used to sneak the key from my aunt’s purse and visit him from time to time. I liked the look of the box. Plain. Small. Manageable. Surprisingly heavy, so after the first visit, I didn’t try to lift it anymore. I wanted to keep my father this way, remember him this way. No bigger than a stack of tissues, easy to tuck away.

I could loom over this box. I could hit it. Kick it. Scream at the top of my lungs at it.

A box could never, ever hurt me.

My twenty-first birthday, I got drunk, raided my aunt’s storage unit, and, in a fit of rage, emptied the box into a sewer grate. I flushed my father down into the bowels of Boston, having to keep my mouth closed, but still inhaling bits of him up my nose.

Immediately afterward, I was sorry I’d done such a thing.

The cardboard box had contained my father, kept him small.

Now I knew he was somewhere out there, floating down various pipes and channels and water systems. Maybe the ash was soaking up the water, steadily expanding, enabling my father to grow again, to loom once more in the dark undergrowth of the city. Until one day, a white hand would shoot up, drag back a sewer grate, and my father would be free.

The cardboard box had contained him.

Now, for all the evil in the world, I had only myself to blame.

“I thought we’d agreed on the buddy system,” Karen was snapping at Greg. It was after four. We were all tired, pale-faced, shocked. Karen had arrived just in time to hear the news of Lucy’s death. She’d stood with us while the ME gently lowered Lucy’s green-shrouded frame onto the waiting gurney. Then the man took Lucy away.

A child is like a snowflake. First thing you learn in pediatric nursing. A child is like a snowflake. Each one unique and original from the one before. Lose one and you have lost too much, because there will never be another quite like her again.

I had my left hand in my pocket, my fingers wrapped around Lucy’s final gift, rolling the little string ball between my fingers again and again.

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”

“She was with the police,” Greg answered tightly. “I thought that was buddy enough. ’Sides, unit was busy. We had a lot going on.”

“Apparently!”

“Dammit, Karen, you can’t possibly think—”