When Grandma was a little girl they brought her home in the car. It was the middle of school and they brought her home in the car. She knew something was wrong but she didn’t cry. In the house they’d gathered, neighbors who lived in rooftops beyond the tree line. There were no relatives but the family.
The funeral was in the kitchen. There was a cedar box white as milk and inside was Kendall. The faces spoke soberly, louder than they should have. Adults in whatever black clothes they could find. Grandma asked someone—a woman—her mother?—why Kendall didn’t come out to play. The boy in her head, dark haired, pale, with big glasses—he was there, right? Making those sounds?
And the woman who wasn’t her mother whispered back: “Because you aren’t to have more than one. And your parents broke the understanding. And now we got to fix this.”
And the milk white box, trembling from something kicking inside, was brought out to the grave.