I carried you in your teacup, three tablespoons of you. Like I was measuring for a recipe. The sun was not yet awake. Together, we walked across the street to the cove, last fall’s leaves underfoot and crunchy with frost. I sat on the rock ledge I dove off every summer, all those bygone Julys, and I saw you and Jack, our old dog, down the cove under the spruce trees. The water was still and calm and quiet. A half-slice of moon over my shoulder. I sprinkled you in the sea at the appointed hour: 6:10 a.m., the time of your death three weeks ago. Four minutes later, the sun rose. A duck quacked. A lone car drove past, late to the island’s annual Easter service at the beach. My fingertips froze as you floated on the water, some of you descending like a wisp of smoke beneath the thin skin of ice. Ash and bone as dense as beach sand, fragments of tiny stones and shells and I didn’t cry until I got up, slowly walking back to the house—home, my home now, our home—the nylon of your rose-colored parka a gentle whisper. I cried a few tears, and they froze as they slid down my cheek.

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