I filled that suffocating box with the small, dull, precious furniture of a future, as though the future were certain, as though we were simply lying in the dark at bedtime the way we had a thousand times before — because a child who believes he has a tomorrow keeps breathing toward it, and every slow breath I could buy them with a lie about the weekend was a breath closer to the sound of the shovels.

I did not say goodbye.

I said tomorrow, over and over, in the dark, until tomorrow came for us.\n\n”Just a little longer, my sweet boys,” I mumbled, my own tongue thick and useless.

“Mommy’s got you.”

And then a new sound came down through the earth.

Not the dull thud of falling dirt — a sharp, rhythmic, desperate scrape.

Metal against gravel.