The sky was clouded over, a light gray mass that stretched across Centreville. Mae glanced at it through her window after shutting off her alarm, wondered if it might rain later. The rain never did come. In fact, though the cloudiness persisted throughout the rest of March and long into April, not a single drop ever fell.

Mae was sitting up on her bed when Mother came in, her eyes red and her cheeks wet with tears. She sat down next to Mae and told her that Dad wouldn’t be coming home that afternoon. There was an accident early that morning. A man in a large truck had a little too much to drink and hit Dad’s car head-on. The truck driver survived. Dad didn’t. When Mother reached that part of the story she pulled Mae into a tight embrace and slowly rubbed her back, as if she was the one who needed to be comforted.

But in that moment, Mae was not sad or angry. Her body did not tighten and her tears did not flow.

What settled over Mae was an odd sense of shock. Wandering her apartment through the rest of the week—Mother gave her permission to skip school until the following Monday—she felt as if some black hole had opened up and suddenly sucked away a part of her, leaving her connection to her immediate surroundings tenuous and weak. Somehow, her body understood that someone so close, so important to her was now gone forever. And with little else to do, Mae spent her days sitting on the couch, watching TV and feeling the weight of that void.

Mother handled her grief differently from Mae. The cork that plugged up Mae’s tear ducts was not present in Mother. Every hour it seemed, Mother would be overtaken by waves of hard, paralyzing sobs, and would retreat to her bedroom until they ceased. But the tears never really stopped. Even during her vain attempts at getting on with her life, there were always a few droplets on the carpet, on the stove, on Mae’s bedsheets. When Dad’s parents arrived, themselves tearful and seeking comfort, they told Mother that they were there to prepare his funeral. Such news tossed Mother into such powerful sobs that she had to hide for the rest of the day. Dad’s parents decided then and there to handle the preparations themselves.

Mae watched all of this but did nothing to help. What could she do? She had never seen her mother in such an intense state of sadness before. Her actions and appearance were unfamiliar to Mae, and with no prior experience or understanding, solutions did not come easily.

The funeral came a few days after Dad’s death. It was, in Mae’s eyes, a small, sad affair, a goodbye made even more depressing by the miniscule number of people present. Aside from Mae, Mother, and Dad’s parents, only two others bothered to show up, old friends from Dad’s workplace.

While everyone else took their time at Dad’s open casket to say their final farewells, Mae only caught a glimpse of the body inside. She felt no desire to stand next to the coffin and stare at Dad’s pale corpse. What she saw of him shook her to the core, left her thinking that what was lying there was not really her father. And, in a way, that was true. It was just a cold hunk of flesh now. Dad’s spirit was long gone. Mae hoped it went someplace nice.

The service only took an hour, though it felt longer. When it ended, Mae’s mother and grandparents carried the casket to the hearse, with the help of a few random employees, and they all drove to the cemetery where Dad would be buried.

With only Mother, Grandma, and Grandpa around, the lonely weight of the service seemed to lift from Mae. Though really, she thought later, she shouldn’t have been too surprised. Dad was an only child, and he’d said before that he didn’t get along well with most of his coworkers. There was also the fact that no relatives from Mother’s side of the family came to share their condolences or see Dad put to rest. This, however, Mae had been anticipating. Mother had mentioned on a few occasions that she came from a large family, had tons of brothers and sisters. But Mae had never met any of them, not her maternal grandparents, nor any of those aunts and uncles. Mother didn’t keep in touch with them either. It seemed as if they wanted nothing to do with her little family. And, Mae guessed, Mother was okay with that.

Dad was in the ground by the time the sun began to fall beyond the horizon. Back home, Mae ran to her bedroom while Mother, Grandma, and Grandpa had some tea at the dining table. She lay in bed and stared up at her ceiling. So that was it, she thought. Dad’s really gone now.

But that wasn’t really it, she knew. Dad’s body was cold and buried, and his spirit had been taken God knows where. But he wasn’t really gone. She could see it in Mother’s wet eyes and Grandma and Grandpa’s mournful expressions. She could feel it in herself, that little black hole persisting. No, it was going to take a lot more time and a lot more effort to move past his death, to try and carry on with their lives.

Mae just hoped that, no matter what happened from that point on, Mother would make it through all right.