The real reason was that as long as Ayana’s ashes sat in a brass urn on the shelf in our bedroom, some part of me could pretend she was still there, still in the house, still mine to talk to in the dark.

Scattering her felt like losing her a second time, like finally admitting what I had refused to admit for two years: that she was gone, all the way gone, and no amount of keeping her in a jar on a shelf was going to change it.

I had thought the scattering would break me.

I had braced for it the way you brace for a blow.

And then the wind took the fine silver dust and carried it out over the water she had loved, and it did not feel like losing her.

It felt like setting her free — like the jar had been a small dark place and the ocean was the whole world, and I had been keeping her in the jar for my sake, not hers.