Ayanna crossed her arms. She made her way back through the crowd in the now semidark, people were turning on their phone flashlights, a small group of people were looking for candles to light, and there was music coming from one of the upstairs rooms. She had the urge to go home, hoping the spirit would follow her, rather than continue to trouble all these people. But wasn’t that what he wanted? For her to be alone, to hope to force her isolation into a shape that would make her think he was the only person she could depend on.

In the darkness, with only the light coming from the spirit, a light she assumed only she could see, Ayanna whispered once, twice, a third time: “Go home and be at rest.”

She went upstairs and brought the music, the Bluetooth speaker, and the people still willing to dance downstairs. The playlist on the kid’s phone was actually good. Songs at the right tempo that most people could follow, solid remixes, a few kitschy Halloween songs, and Ayanna thought the only thing that felt truly right in this moment was to join them. It was hard at first, despite the room’s lighting; Ayanna was self-conscious, felt like she was always moving on the ones and threes, and despite the lightness she felt when running or chasing a ball and reading the movements of others around her, the dance floor felt like it was an obstacle course. Whispered it again and again as she danced, “go home and be at rest.” Then, she drank some more beer, went back, and they were playing a song she always associated with her dad.

A rap song that for years he would put on every time he’d had a hard day and still needed to cook. Something about the first beats always eased his shoulders, and by thirty-five seconds in, he wouldn’t just be seasoning meat or chopping vegetables, but dancing, moving his head, letting the beat move to his torso, spin and twirl him around, making him wonderful, making him embarrassing, making him all body and shedding everything but the pleasure he felt in being able to dance in his own home. And some of the happiest moments of her life had been in that kitchen with him, Ayanna trying to dance while passing him the garlic, laughing at the moves he was trying to pull, inventing the moves they called “chop-chop,” “soup shuffle,” and “low simmer.”