The Stepbrother He Buried

My husband was buried two years ago in a closed casket with the family's whole roll call around the grave. Two months ago I got a postcard in his handwriting, and I put it in a drawer. Then his stepbrother Ilya stood in my kitchen holding the same card in his own mail and I understood that I was not the only one Dragan left a message for. Ilya gave the eulogy. Ilya signed the certificate. Neither of us wants Dragan alive — me because the insurance has already paid and him because the name Dragan used to move money belongs to a dead man. We gave ourselves thirty days to find him, and we found him in a cottage on the bay with a woman who has been with him three years. Ilya took him for a drive. Only Ilya came back. The family closed the file. We cleared the storage unit in one afternoon and burned everything in it. That was the year I stopped asking what I was to Ilya and started answering it.