At home, she kills the engine and eyes the exterior of her house, sometimes still floored that this palatial home is all hers. Though this house wasn’t her style when they bought it, she’s managed to marry its traditional bones with her more modern aesthetic. Inside, the house is quiet. She checks her phone, but Pam didn’t say anything about going out tonight.

She drops her bags and glances at the living room out of the corner of her eye. “What in the world?” The room has been cleared. No boxes.

Something in her gut tumbles and drops. Did Pam do this? She would never move Paul’s boxes without permission. But what about her recent concerns with some of Paul’s missing belongings? She walks through the kitchen and opens the garage door. Nothing there either.

Suddenly, in the absence of Paul’s boxes, her fingers itch to open each one and hold her husband’s possessions. His old blazers. His tennis rackets and trophies from high school. His military medals. His notebooks full of goofy drawings. Keeping them tethers her to who she was then—a clueless wife, a distracted mother—but the sudden thought of not being able to say good-bye robs the breath from her lungs. She needs to see the faded Sharpie. She needs to open those boxes now.

She circles around toward the kitchen and pulls open the blackout shades from the glass doors that lead to the pool. “Oh my God!” Reams of smoke drift horizontally across the backyard. They curl over the privacy fence and evaporate into a stream of gray. Crystal fumbles with the glass doors and steps outside to assess the fire.

Where is Savi? And where the hell is Pam? Though they’ve built fires before, they’ve always been contained to the fire pit. As she nears the scene, she realizes the source of the fire. It’s not piles of leaves or sticks that are burning: it’s her husband’s boxes. All of them. She watches the last letters of his name disintegrate and burn, just like her memories.

Crystal stands, dumbfounded, as the fire roars. She ransacks her brain for signs of pyromania. Sure, Savi likes playing with hot candle wax or using the gas stove to cook eggs, but this? It’s too much. Not to mention, her daughter could never drag these boxes out here by herself.

That leaves just one person: Pam.

The hostile black smoke curls higher. First things first. She moves to the side of the house and cranks the hose. She extinguishes the fire, which takes more effort than she would have thought. She gazes at the mangled mess of her husband’s life, now melted and too hot to touch.