I chose three smooth stones: one for each of us, and loaded them into the jolly-boat. As an afterthought I went back, further into the grasses, until I came to a hollow filled with small coastal plants: daisies and pigface, samphire and tiny orchids. My feet began to sink into moonbird burrows: in disturbing the ground and casting seed, the birds had created a garden. I scooped among the daisies with my poor burnt hands, disturbing tiny bees, and made a thick posy. The sleeves of my dress were singed and torn: I ripped a length of fabric from the left one and used it to tie the flower stems. And so, satisfied with my foraging, I rowed back, sweat and seawater droplets burning as they found their way through the bandages.

On the Moonbird, Argyle had unscrewed the table from the galley, brought it out onto the deck and laid my father upon it. He took one of the Connollys’ hammocks from the hold to serve as a winding sheet. We gently brought it under his body so that the two sides met above him. Tarenorerer stood alone, at a distance from us. I took her separation to be a mark of respect, that she perhaps did not consider this to be her place or her tradition. It was not mine, for that matter, but Argyle’s quiet competence settled it as the right thing to do.

He took the small leather pouch that held the sail repair kit and drew twine through a heavy needle. As he began a line of stitches from my father’s feet, I placed a stone between his knees. I took a bucket and washed my father’s body, taking the salt and soot with sweeps of the cloth, feeling the small shifts of his flesh under my hand.

As Argyle’s line of stitching followed me, I placed my father’s hands on his chest—over the healing scratches where he had torn at his skin amid the tremens—and I put the second stone under the crossed palms. I slowed my work over his face, wanting to lift his sorrows and wring them into the bucket. Argyle arrived after me with his stitching, each of us silently attuned to the other’s movements.

I lifted my father’s head and placed the final stone, a flatter one, beneath it.

Argyle paused over the face, regarded him for a moment, then passed a stitch through the septum of his nose and tied it off. ‘Tradition,’ he said when I glanced my question.

I had thought about the day I would bury my father. Never seeing this, of course, but when I imagined the moment, there was always a final exchange: of apologies, promises, explanations. In my imagining, he hadn’t left me like this, without a word. How would I tell him all the things that were in my heart?