Kavita stares ahead at the dusty base boards until the heaviness subsides enough for her to resurface. The album is still in her hands. The empty album. The album that will remain empty because there is no family left to fill it with memories. No family because her parents won’t try. No family because her parents can’t see her needing them to stay together. Can’t see her needing them to help clear the rubble instead of create more. Can’t see her at all. She is hurting too, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Not to them or Nirav or Chi.

It would have mattered to Sunil. But he’s too far from her now. He’s too far from her because she didn’t keep her promise. The black voice is right. She didn’t keep him safe. She failed him. She keeps failing.

Blaze awakens, begins to rise. Her hands feel hot and tight, her fingertips itchy and swollen, as quick waves of energy gather, build. Her heart beats strongly through her scar. It doesn’t hurt enough. Not nearly enough.

She grips one of the album’s glossy pages. Balls a fist around it. Rips it from the album’s spine. Then another, and another, and another. Until there is nothing left to tear apart.

She blinks out of her stupor. Observes the mess around her feet, distantly, as if it was made by someone else. Sees a red smear at the crook of her right hand, the tender skin between her forefinger and thumb, torn and bleeding. When did that happen? She lifts the cut to her mouth and presses her tongue against it.

Then, with the taste of metal on her tongue, she calmly closes the pageless album, as if doing so is the most ordinary thing in the world.

8.

Another day, another week, and another two more, all passing in restless sleeping at night, tired waking at dawn, and restless tiredness all through the day.

There were the crushing business-of-death appointments to confront—the reading of Sunil’s will at Mr. Desjardins’s office, “liquidating assets” at the bank, transferring car ownership, meeting with the accountant to file the last taxes, returning government-issued documents, applying for the callously named “death benefit” at City Hall, and on and on. Part of her felt relieved as she completed the tasks, and yet, their completion also left her feeling slightly paralyzed, as if Sunil were vanishing a little more every time she drew a line through another item on her list, the way an antacid tablet fizzed in a glass of water until it was gone, and she, like the water that overwhelms the tablet, was the one responsible for Sunil’s dissolution. It was hard to reconcile the two: her duty, and this act of erasure.