Scattering the Ashes Late, late at night, he searches for her birth certificate, for their marriage license, for snapshots of the two of them, together. Morning begins with daylight splayed across the surface of the frozen pond behind their house. It is late February 2022 and still this winter threatens. Oak leaves, brown and sere, hang from limbs like cast-off face masks; spiny pathogens, disguised as burrs, lie in wait to catch and cling. Outside, he knows her garden is mid-winter hard: he hears the pond ice crack and buckle in the cold. But in early April, when the pond…