"Do you know what he did with them?" Thomas asked.
She did not.
On the drive home Thomas understood that Marcus had brought more than a letter back from West Virginia. Somewhere — in the Ellison house, or scattered in some place Marcus had chosen and told no one — were Andrew's ashes. The thought might have undone him a year earlier. Now it felt like a strange mercy. His brother had not been left in a stranger's vault. He had been carried, again, by the same man who had carried his words.
When Thomas told Monique about Beckley, sitting at her kitchen table while Ava watched a movie in the other room, she was quiet for a long time.
"The box," she said finally. "On the high shelf in the hall closet. Wooden. Unlabeled. Marcus put it there after the Beckley trip and said it was keepsakes from an old friend. I never opened it. I thought it was letters or photographs. I didn't want to pry." Her voice thinned. "I think I know what it is now."
They opened it together the next evening, after Ava was asleep. Inside, wrapped in a dark cloth, was a simple urn of brushed metal. No plaque. No dates. Only the weight of what remained.
Thomas stood in the hallway of the Ellison house holding his brother's ashes and felt the years rearrange themselves once more. Monique put her hand on his shoulder and left it there.
"What do you want to do?" she asked.