Lani Walker’s return home after Fat Crack Ortiz’s death is both an urgent journey and a recognition of where her family’s obligations lie. Told by Wanda Ortiz that Fat Crack Ortiz is gone, Lani immediately commits to coming home. The trip is delayed by the practical demands of university finals and travel arrangements, but its emotional destination comes into focus when she learns that her father and brother are at Ban Thak, helping prepare the grave. What first looks like an absence at the airport becomes evidence that they are already doing what matters.

The Call and the Decision

Wanda Ortiz has gone outside to check on Fat Crack Ortiz when she calls Lani with the news. Lani asks whether it is Wanda, then understands what the word “gone” means without needing an explanation. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and says she is coming home. Before setting out, she will call her parents; the decision itself is immediate, even though getting there will take time.

Lani spends several hours contacting her professors, arranging her finals, and organizing for her belongings to be packed and shipped home. Only after these arrangements are made does she book a flight. The only available option will bring her to Phoenix early the following afternoon. The delay is logistical rather than a change of heart: she has already decided to return, and she completes the arrangements needed to do so.

The Journey and the Expected Welcome

After buying her ticket, Lani tries to reach her parents. She first calls her father, Brandon Walker, but he does not answer. Her mother, Diana Ladd, then calls to tell her what has happened; Lani explains that Wanda has already reached her and gives her mother the flight details. She plans to take the shuttle from the airport. Diana tells her not to: someone will meet her in Phoenix.

During the long flight from Minneapolis, Lani hopes that either Brandon or her brother, Davy Ladd, will be there to collect her. Instead, she sees Candace and Tyler waving from beyond the security checkpoint. Lani does not dislike Candace, but their lives and backgrounds have left them with little in common apart from their shared love for Lani’s brother. In her exhaustion and grief, the prospect of the ride home with Candace is especially disappointing. Candace once misunderstood “Fat Crack” as part of Fat Crack Ortiz’s last name, a small but telling sign of how little she knew of the loss Lani and Davy shared.

The Grave at Ban Thak

As they walk toward the luggage carousels, Candace explains that Gabe Ortiz’s sons asked Brandon and Davy to help dig the grave at a village on the reservation. She comments on the use of picks and shovels, comparing it with machine-dug graves back home. Lani stops listening to the complaint. Her attention shifts from the airport pickup she had hoped for to the work her father and brother have undertaken.

Neither Brandon nor Davy has come to the airport, but both are at Ban Thak, helping with the burial. The distinction changes the meaning of their absence: they have not failed to come home for her; they are already present where the family’s loss requires them. The narrative identifies Davy as the Boy with Two Mothers and Four Fathers, placing Lani’s immediate family within a wider network of kinship. Their shared action at the grave makes that network concrete, rather than merely a description.

From Disappointment to Belonging

For the rest of the drive, Lani is virtually impervious to Tyler’s crying and shouting from his car seat. Her hurt has passed, and she is content. The emotional turn is not caused by a conventional welcome at the airport. It comes through learning what Brandon and Davy are doing: digging a grave by hand, together, because that is what the moment calls for.

Lani’s private conclusion that this is the way things ought to be gives the return its force. She arrives still grieving Fat Crack Ortiz, and the evidence does not suggest that the grief is resolved. Instead, the journey carries her from the shock of the call through fatigue and disappointment to reassurance in a family’s practical act of care. The grave links mourning to responsibility, while the contrast between Candace’s incomprehension and Lani’s recognition marks the difference between witnessing a custom from outside and understanding why her own people are there.