The day her father died, Helena saw a mouse on her walk home. The mouse, ironically, was also dead. It was autumn in central California, which mostly meant that the sky was gray and the trees were reedy and bare. There were brown, crunchy leaves all over the sidewalk, and as Helena walked home from school, she luxuriated in the snapping sound they made as she trampled them, like she was walking on a bed of potato chips. This is also why she stopped when her boot-clad foot made contact with something soft. She lifted her foot, hesitated for a moment, then looked down at the sidewalk. There, amidst the skeletal leaves and the bits of sidewalk winking at her from below, was a dead mouse.

Here are some good things about the mouse: Its eyes were closed, which, as they say, made it look almost as if it were asleep. Sleep is peaceful, and so the mouse appeared to be peaceful. It had a brown coat of fur which blended in nicely with the leaves. Looking at its sleeping face, Helena thought it was one of the most precious things she’d ever seen.

Here is the bad thing about the mouse: Its body was squished flat. Helena was so invested in her stomping of the leaves, and the mouse blended in so thoroughly, that she had effectively stepped on its stomach. This force pushed the soft guts of the mouse outside of its body, which Helena didn’t notice until her gaze moved from the mouse’s face to its stomach—now flat, the pinkish-reddish innards a shocking display of color on the otherwise gray-and-brown sidewalk.

Helena did not yet know that her father had died. But yesterday, when she visited him in the hospital after school, the nurse came in to take another blood sample from him. Just running some more tests, she told Helena apologetically. Which was to say that, after two months of her father feeling so weak he couldn’t keep his eyes open, the doctors still had no idea what was wrong with him. The hospital room her father was staying in was like most hospital rooms. White walls, gray furniture, fluorescent lights. So, when the nurse came in to draw blood, Helena’s eyes stayed glued to the syringe. As the nurse pulled up on the suction, Helena watched the bright red blood fill the little tube, and she thought the now-red tube was a sort of prophecy. Like, if she looked close enough at its contents, she’d find her father’s future right there in his blood.

The next day, when she saw the dead, squished mouse with its pinkish-reddish innards on full display, the only logical thing for Helena to do was cry. Cry, look away from its crushed body, shove her hands deep into her coat pockets, and power walk back to her home. Her mother was waiting for her in the living room when she returned. She was perched on their pale, green couch, face red and splotchy. She straightened up when she saw Helena walk through the front door.

Her mother didn’t need to say anything. Helena saw in the smooshed guts of that sleeping, peaceful mouse what had happened. Her father was dead. And peace is just another word for cessation.