She finds her mother crouched on the floor, dressed in her lavender robe, with her head resting at the foot of Sunil’s bed. She has walled his urn between two couch cushions. One of her hands rests upon it. The other loosely grips some tissues.

Kavita gently touches her mother’s shoulder.

Her mother wakes, startled. Glances at Kavita, dismissively, and then closes her eyes again.

“Sorry,” she says, gently. “I didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing down here? Why are you on the floor?”

“I didn’t want to disturb anything,” her mother answers. “You can still see where his head rested on the pillow.”

Kavita can only glimpse at the indentation for a second. “Come on, Mom.” She holds her mother by the shoulders. “Let me help you up.”

“Leave me.”

“I’ll fix you some tea. Or maybe you’d like some—”

“I said leave me!” her mother shouts. “I feel him here.”

Kavita kneels, placing a light hand on her mother’s back. “Come on, let me fix you something. You have to keep your strength up.”

“What does it matter?” Her mother strokes the urn. “I’ve already lost the most precious thing in my life.”

Kavita contracts, pulling her hand away, as though protecting herself. Her mother’s words replay inside her head: …already lost the most precious thing.…

As Kavita kneels there mutely, waiting for the bite to stop throbbing, a gloom rolls over her, black and heavy, like leaded fog. Then it speaks. She thinks the wrong child got sick, it tells her. Its voice is cold confidence, so sure, so even, that what it says must be true. She thinks the wrong child died.

The weight of the fog holds her within its cave of dark thought. Kavita sits motionless, almost breathless, for some time, afraid to consider whether the Black Gloom is right.

Eventually, her throat to loosens, and she tries again. “Please, let’s go upstairs,” she manages to say. “You’ll feel better with some food in your stomach. Then maybe you can take a shower and we can go for a walk? What do you think?”

“Just go,” her mother mumbles. “Leave me alone.”

Kavita releases a quiet, defeated sigh. She knows it’s no use. She pushes herself up off her aching knees, reluctantly conceding to leave her mother in the hellish peace of Sunil’s bedroom, as she wishes. At the doorway, she stalls, as she peers over her shoulder, with one last thing to say.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she tells her mother. Perhaps for the moment, to respect her mother’s wishes, but not in the greater sense. No matter how hard her mother shoves or bites her with words, Kavita won’t leave, and she will never give up on her.