“Sometimes I think of that story my daughter told me from the book. I would feel better some days if I could do something like that. Better than having no one to bury, better than having hope that dies. I am sorry.” He looked around the table and shrugged. “I am sorry to be saying sad things. Maybe when the women roll down the hill in the story, also they laugh. Or they cry. This is not something I have seen with my two eyes, and maybe it is rare and maybe it is invented. I try to imagine a good storyteller writing this. My daughter told me and now I share with you.”

He smiled and the others smiled, too, each creating a picture, each imagining the ritual, finding the nearest slope—if the graveyard didn’t have a hill of its own—and rolling, whatever the season, whatever the weather.

“I’d like to read that book,” said Gwen, speaking softly and for the first time this evening. “Next time we’re here, will you tell me the title?” As if someone else had made the request, she stared at the pumpkin again.

“Yes.”

“I’d like to roll down a hill,” said Hazzley, thinking of what such an act would release. She would get rid of the bottles, then find a hill and roll down. Or roll the bottles down. That would be the end of them. Except there’d be broken glass at the bottom of the hill, a lot of glass. Not a solution after all.

“Sounds like a great ritual,” said Addie, thinking that sadness imposed by grief would be heavily tinged with relief while rolling down a hill. “I’d like to meet the woman who started this.”

“This ritual, these women in the story,” said Allam, “they give strength one to the other. There is a place in the world for ritual. Not everything is a bad story, sad story. I know we must look ahead, not forever behind.

“Another ritual I have learned—not about humans—is the dance of the cranes. In Hokkaido, red-crowned cranes were hunted until on the edge of extinct. Is this understood? On the edge?” The others nodded, and he carried on. “In the last century in the north part of Japan, only thirty of these beautiful creatures remained. Now they are protected, valued, hunted no more. When the numbers became bigger, the old meaning of cranes came back for the people, for the culture of that place. Beauty, long life. The dance of one pair of cranes declares territory, but the dance also makes the cranes strong, one to another.”

“I hope to see dancing cranes someday,” said Chiyo. “I’ve never been to Japan, though it’s the land of my ancestors. Plenty of ritual in that country, I’m sure.” She paused for a moment. “Here’s something that isn’t exactly ritual. Or maybe it is. About a week after my mother died, I was home by myself. People had come and gone and the funeral was over, and I was in the living room alone and sun was shining through the window and I lay down on the floor in the middle of the room and curled up and wept.”