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I checked the window before running downstairs. No delivery truck. No car parked outside the building.

Still in my robe, I opened my door and walked down the stairwell to the front entrance. I’m not sure why I hesitated before opening it.

A box sat on the front porch.

I looked to my left and right. The street was empty.

I picked up the box. It was light. I looked out at the street one more time, then took it upstairs.

I set the box on the kitchen table. There was no mailing address. No sender address. Just my name. Marlowe Tamworth.

I opened it with a kitchen knife.

A strange smell hit me before I’d opened the flap. Faintly sweet and metallic.

Something sat on a bed of wildflowers.

Something wrapped in a wedding veil.

I picked it up and unwrapped it slowly, the steadiness of my hands peeling away with it.

A dead bird lay in my hand.

A dead wren.

I don’t remember the moment between dropping the wren back in the box and calling Damian, but that’s what I was doing, phone clutched to my ear.

“Marlowe?” he said, like he already knew something was wrong.

“They left a dead wren on my doorstep. Wrapped in a wedding veil.”

“Don’t move,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

By the time he arrived at my door, I’d had just enough time to shower and get dressed. I let him inside, checking the street.

I bolted the door behind us. He looked at me like he was checking for damage.

“It’s in the kitchen,” I said.

He followed me but hesitated in the doorway. For a moment, he was completely still.

“Don’t touch it,” he said, even though I hadn’t moved. “I’ll deal with it.”

I understood. If they were going to put her on my doorstep, then he was going to be the one to take her off it. He needed that.

He stayed there another moment, looking at the dead thing in its terrible little wedding, and when he spoke again, I could barely hear him.

“They want you to throw it in the trash. We should bury it instead. Give it the respect they never gave Wren.”

The grief in him slowly hardened. I led him to a patch of dirt by the fence of the backyard I shared with my neighbors.

My neighbor kept a trowel in a small box by the backdoor. I handed it to Damian.

He dug a hole and placed the bird inside it, laid the flowers on top, then covered it with soil.

“I’m sorry,” he said, to the bird, not me. “I will fix this.”

He looked at me like he expected me to say something.