The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen

purpose of its own. Rather than wind down toward sleep, Ricky had grown to feel more lively as they talked, and John, if not entirely understanding this then liking it anyway, had been emboldened to move in and rest his head on her stomach.
    Each was surprised when her fingers found their way into his curls. It silenced them. John closed his eyes. He drifted toward sleep (he could do this very rapidly; it was the envy of his wife, this ability to slip so easily from consciousness into R.E.M.). Then all at once, he jerked himself fully awake: he had neglected to tell Ricky what Gordie had said about Biscuit and the ashes.
    John had confronted Biscuit about it, going to her room before dinner and closing the door behind him. “So what was that all about?” he asked.
    She’d played dumb. Ashes? What?
    He pressed and cajoled, tried concern and then anger, but she refused to acknowledge, let alone explain, her actions, until, “This is serious,” he’d said, raising his voice. “You could have drowned!”
    To that she’d responded with a small, sweet smile that walked the line between contrition and condescension. “Dad. I wouldn’t have.”
    The maddening thing was, he agreed with her; he could not help feeling she was right, that she was essentially not in danger. But what, then, was she up to? Why all the mysterious absences? Now, as every time, she would not say. She either remained stubbornly, serenely vague or affected lack of comprehension.
    At last John had heaved a sigh, rubbing a hand across his brow and down his beard. “It’s got to stop, Bis. That’s all I can say.”
    Although she had not voiced any argument, he knew already, as he left her room and went downstairs to start dinner, that his words would prove ineffectual and that he’d come no closer to understanding what lay beneath either her truancies or any of her peculiar, largely secretive activities.
    John knew he ought to fill Ricky in on all of this now. He would. He’d count to five and then bring it up. But how he dreaded saying even the word “ashes.” For all it would invoke.
    He’d already made sure, of course, that Biscuit hadn’t somehow found them. He’d done that first, before going to speak with her in her room. Right after saying good-bye to Gordie he’d gone straight up to their bedroom and looked in the closet, feeling around on the back of the high shelf where he’d buried the corrugated cardboard box beneath a mothy old sweater. He was the one who had hidden it, the only one who knew where it was, Ricky having asked him to take charge of it almost a year earlier. “Put it away somewhere,” she’d said dully from the bed, her eyes closed, her face turned away.
    But Biscuit was such an avid spy, and knew no bounds when it came to property or privacy. So that afternoon when John checked, he’d been relieved to find it still in its place, still sealed with clear packing tape. Relieved and then clobbered, blindsided: in his hands, in this small box, this small definite box with its definite dimensions, its definite significant weight, rested all that remained of his son, the son he’d never held in life, in flesh. It made the walls reel about him. He’d replaced the box beneath the holey wool and gone unsteadily from the room.
    John drew a breath to tell Ricky about Biscuit, but the mattress quaked then and Ricky was in flight, having extracted herself from under him and sprung from the bed in a single move, childlike in her fleetness. He propped himself on an elbow and watched her cross in the direction of the closet. For a moment he thought she’d read his mind, was searching out the box of ashes. But she went to her dresser instead.
    He waited, but she did not offer any explanation. “What are you doing?”
    “I think . . . I still have . . .” She was fumbling in the top drawer, groping around at the back, her arm thrust deep. She withdrew it, victorious. “Yes—I didn’t throw it away.” She brought to their