Slowly I had to recognize in my heart what I’d known for some time in my head. My mother was gone. She was one of the thousands who were missing but would never be found. She was buried in a collapsed building or under tons of sand and mud, and her body wouldn’t be uncovered for days or weeks or even longer. Or maybe she had been pulled back out to sea with the retreating water. I still held on to a little hope, a dream of another miracle, but, really, I knew.

In a strange way, I was grateful that I didn’t have to share with her what had happened to Dad. It would have broken her heart in two. Telling my brother about our father was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my whole life—harder even than finding him under that tarp. The next hardest thing was helping Sam to understand that my mother was gone, too. It was just the two of us now. All we had was each other.

The sun was just getting ready to sink into the sea as we stood on the beach. Surrounding us were a handful of tourists, other foreigners, as well as dozens and dozens of local people. Everybody there had lost somebody. Some had lost everybody.

“It’s beautiful here,” Sam said.

I was startled out of my thoughts. “Yes, it is.”

“Hard to believe…any of it.”

“It is.”

My brother hadn’t said much in the last few days. There was too much for him to understand, to accept. It was too much for me too.

Tomorrow morning we’d be flying home. My aunt and uncle would be waiting for us at the airport in New York. Tad would be there, too. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to Sam and me—where we would live, what we would do—but I knew we had a home with my aunt and uncle for as long as we wanted. We’d have to arrange a funeral service for my father and mother, sell the house, and maybe I’d have to take a semester off school to help my brother settle into their home and a new school and—there was no point in even trying to think it through. There’d be time, and I’d have help. Right now I just had to be here, with Sam.

I looked over at my brother as he stared out at the water. He looked as sad and solemn and serious as I felt…as the occasion deserved. I squeezed his hand tighter.

Moving among us on the beach, drifting as if they were orange sails pushed by the gentle wind, were the Buddhist monks. Their voices were soft and calm, chanting words that I didn’t understand. All around us there were candles set into little holes dug in the sand. They provided puddles of light that slowly spilled over and onto the beach, and as the sun began to set, its rays were replaced by their warm light.