There was never any snow where I was living at the time my parents died. I used to spend the mornings with a mug in my hands and my knees wrapped in a blanket, staring out my tiny, smudged window at a dull, frozen wasteland. My father always used to say that snow was the last pure thing on earth. I don’t know why; it fell from the same clouds and sky that the rain did.

My aunt called me the one morning I thought I saw flurries. I stared hard out the window for a few moments, searching for the movement I had seen only a moment before. The ringing trilled persistently behind me. Finally, I stood and stretched, put my mug down on the windowsill and picked up the phone. I got a chill as I touched the handset and crouched absentmindedly for the blanket that had fallen to the floor. “Hello?”

“Tracy?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Aunt Dahlia.”

“Yes, I know. How are you? I was just about to take a shower.”

“Tracy.” Her voice sounded tinny and faraway. I imagined a small light at the end of a dark hallway. A small woman with silver hair and a black dress would sit in a room with that light and call to people who could barely hear her. She looked like my Aunt Dahlia.

“Your parents. They’re . . . Tracy, they passed on.”

She wore a large silver cross and her hands were cold.

“What?”

“Your parents are dead.”

I took a deep breath and scratched my ear. “They . . . that can’t be right.”

“What?” My aunt’s breathing got faster. “Tracy, what?”

“I’m . . . I’m coming home for Christmas.”

“I know you were. You’ve got to come home earlier. This weekend. That’s the funeral. The wake’s tomorrow night, if you can make the first one. Do you want me to call your work number for you?”

I stared at the wall thoughtfully. “I’m supposed to come home for Christmas. “

My aunt was silent, her breath held tense. I heard a rustling. She let out a strangled sigh, like a half-sob.

“It must be a mistake.”

“What?” said  Aunt Dahlia. I heard her sit up straighter. Her voice seemed to float closer.

I laughed. “It’s a mistake! It must be.”

“Tracy, what are you sa—”

“My parents can’t be dead, Aunt Dahlia,” I said kindly. “That’s silly. I’m coming home for Christmas. They weren’t sick. They can’t have both died at once.”

“Tracy, it’s true. They—”

“Good-bye, Aunt Dahlia,” I said. I heard her crying as I pressed the Talk button and set the phone down gently. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and turned to sit on the sofa.

Snow was falling, thick and fast, and had already covered the ground. What had once been a dreary, silvery morning sky was now an achingly bright world of white. Black branches twisted and crawled across the sky. I stared at it as the phone began to ring.

“Oh, my God,” I said softly and brought my hands to my face. “My parents are dead.”

The phone kept ringing as my tears froze to my cheeks.