Eric carried the small coffin, red-rimmed eyes burning out of a blank face. A church warden helped. Eve watched as they made their way down the aisle. Poppy was by her side, Sorrel on her lap. Charley sat on her other side in order to hold Sorrel’s hand. Charley is a soldier of a child, as it turns out, stalwart and kind, hurrying to help with the funeral leaflets and the hymn books. Melly and Paul sat behind them with Izzy, whose head was bent throughout. Martin was behind them with Grace and Blake. The thud of Blake’s sandals hitting the pew threads her memories along with Eric’s face, Grace’s fierce hug, and the tears on Melly’s cheeks. Sorrel was as tearful as she had been since Ash died, but she can only hold her; there are no magic words, or none that she can find. The girls will heal, Eric had muttered at some point in the day, their lives will go on. Ash’s has ended, she’d replied.

“He is dead,” Eve whispers to the yellow room, painted to match their golden-haired boy. She won’t see him again. She won’t feel his face against hers. The agony drenches her and then recedes before crashing again. She doesn’t cry, she hasn’t cried since the day it happened. She doesn’t have the energy. She doesn’t eat, and sleeps only when the sky pales outside, waking again an hour later with her arms aching as if from the weight of a child. Once she woke Eric to ask him if drowned children were heavier than sleeping ones. He shook his head and turned his face away. They’ve hardly talked since the funeral.

She sits down on the bed, still holding the onesie. Faint music floats up from the kitchen; she hasn’t been downstairs in three weeks.

There was no water in the lungs according to the autopsy, the policewoman told them.

Eric had asked her, confused and stumbling over his words, if that meant Ash had died even before he fell in the water. It didn’t, she’d explained gently. An absence of water in the lungs was common in drownings; the larynx spasms in cold water, no water therefore enters the lungs. The technical term was “dry drowning.” It was a tragic truth that more children drown at their homes than anywhere else. Children get out of their beds and wander, she said, they fall into canals and rivers and swimming pools, even the sea sometimes; no one should feel guilty.

Eve feels guilty, though; she knows it was her fault. She didn’t tell the police she’d been drunk. Drunk enough to leave the back door open, drunk enough to sleep through her son calling her and the sound of his footsteps as he stumbled his way downstairs. A tragic accident but one she could have prevented.

Grace and Melly come over most days, taking turns cooking. Charley and Blake and Izzy keep the girls company after school, returning to their homes after supper. Eve told her friends she would understand if they didn’t want their kids visiting the house, considering what had happened. Melly hugged her and said nothing would stop them from coming over, Grace said the same.