“Oh, I’m fine now. Lumpectomy and radiation. Connie was there by my side, even though she had her own stuff going on. I just had a follow-up scan. My oncologist says it looks like I’m out of the woods.”

“That’s good to hear.” Poppy felt terrible. What else didn’t she know? What did Dawn mean when she said her mother had her own stuff going on? She was too tired to ask, too overwhelmed to think about all the people she hadn’t been there for. She’d spoken with her parents occasionally, and they emailed sometimes, but there had been long chunks of time when she’d drop out entirely, like when she was running from dark energy in Indonesia, or during her months in the ashram.

“I think of it as a blessing that your parents died together. They were so close, I don’t think they could have lived apart. Everyone wanted what they had. I know I sure did.”

Dawn started driving. Her conversation picked up nervous momentum along with her car’s engine. She turned on Rawson and passed the airport runways. Icicles hung from the wings of the parked planes, and the snow on the ground was stained a toxic blue from the deicing fluid. There was so much snow and concrete, like a color photograph that’s been turned to sepia, that Poppy wondered if all her time on golden beaches, with sparkling water and vibrant green palm trees, had been some sort of dream. How could both worlds exist on the same planet? Milwaukee in winter was a place that could make you believe that warmth and color didn’t exist.

They crested the Hoan Bridge. Poppy was struck with a view of downtown Milwaukee that was strange and almost postapocalyptic: dunes of salt for the deicing crews in the industrial valley, and the rugged city in the distance, the blend of solid old buildings and sleek high-rises, looking clean, tough, and resilient under the stiff bank of clouds that hung above it. Lake Michigan was silver and still, like a pool of mercury. Incinerators belched out smoke in the distance, a dark reminder that her parents had been cremated.

In one of Ann’s emails, she told Poppy that the crematorium had a waiting room. Isn’t that strange? she wrote. A waiting room. Everything is so weird now.

Poppy pictured her sister on a vinyl chair, surrounded by grieving strangers, all alone. When they handed me the boxes they were still warm. It was almost like they were alive.