There are no pieces, no parts, that can be assembled to make sense of the absence my sister has become. There is just a sudden, shocking emptiness where her life used to be. I try to count the voids. To trace their shapes. When a person dies, you do this. You try to account for what’s gone. Some of what’s missing will be clear right away. The missing sound of their voice, or the to-do lists they’ll never complete, or the new blankness that sits in their chair at breakfast. Those I’m ready for. But so much worse are the small, infuriatingly small gaps—really just pinprick holes—that Caroline
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