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It seeuished so colow behind, the way a laainst the darkness I’d felt certain I would feel her presence somewhere … but I hadn’t
There were only dead leaves round the butterfly bush in the garden, and flowerless shrubs round the porch with its e, and when I started to pack up her closets there wasn’t so much as a movement of air in the hallway behind me to let me believe that my sister, in some as there with me still
So I went through the s that needed attention, and tried to get on with reat hollow loneliness grew deep insidecame, and Bill ca without calling first, looking aard And holding her ashes
I hadn’t seen hih because he had a film just out I’d seen him fairly often on the entertainment news
He didn’t want to come inside He cleared his throat, a bit uncohtly to the plain oak box that held Katrina’s ashes ‘She wanted me to scatter these’
‘I know’ My sister’s wishes hadn’t been a secret
‘I don’t knohere to do it Don’t knohere to take theht maybe you …’ His pause this time was more a ht you could do a better job’
I looked at him, and for the first time since her death our eyes hed ‘I don’t need to be there when you do it, I’ve said ht you’d know better than I would where she was the happiest Where she belongs’
And then he pushed the box intofro off I wouldn’t see him after that, I knew We moved in different circles, and the bond we’d had between us was reduced now to the simple box he’d handed me
Inside, I set it on the narrow table by
Where she’d been the happiest, he’d said There were sothe choices inwe had stood and watched the sun rise from the brink of the Grand Canyon, and Katrina’s face had radiated wonder far below us, and she’d said she’d never seen a place so beautiful; the time she’d made a movie in Mu action with a weekend in Kerala on the southern coast of India, and I had flown over to join her and we’d spent our evenings walking on the black sand beach while gorgeous sunsets flamed the sky above the blue Arabian sea, and Katrina had splashed through the waves like a child, and been happy