Nearly two months of mourning and Zelda still did not feel prepared for the funeral for her siblings, brother-in-law, and nieces. It was also particularly difficult to hold a funeral without bodies, and the rituals at the synagogue felt cut-off because of it. (The rituals at the synagogue also felt cut off because it was difficult to manage her children and coach her husband through what was happening and mourn her family members all at the same time.)

Shiva, though — this was easier to handle. Whenever she was not doing the minimum to help get the Ministry through things, in the next week, she would be at her father's house engaging in formal mourning. (More formal than the outfits and isolation that they were already required to maintain by society's expectations, to Zelda.)

Zelda rapidly gave up on getting her son to wash his hands and gave him to Alfred, and settled instead to shuffling around the Fisk house and covering mirrors. It was hard to make her father's home feel cramped, after so many children had been there at the same time, but there were so many of them here for the Shiva that things were already busy.

(Did the busy-ness, the inherent weight of them all, undermine the mourning? Zelda felt empty, lately — all this loss was impossible to reckon with. It was as if they had never even existed, and yet every morning she woke up and remembered that they had, and that they were gone. And what would she do when Alfred was underway, without Katia's support? How was she going to balance it all?)

She finished covering the mirror hung in the hallway with black fabric and stepped into Nemo's room. Zelda started as she realized that she was not alone, and was instead with a brother that she was not sure how to speak to, outside of the clinical setting of the hospital. At the hospital, she was usually trying to cheer him — here, now, it was impossible to pretend that everything was fine.

And how could she pretend that she knew how he ought to get better, that she knew how the world was fine, when the world was not fine and what was the point?

"Mirrors," Zelda said, holding up the black fabric. "I didn't mean to interrupt."