Well, I’ve thought about that, too. “There’s an upside to it,” I reason. “He didn’t want to live to be a vegetable. This was cleaner.”

“Did he know it was happening?”

“He knew his heart was weak.”

“But when it happened, did he know?”

“That he was having a heart attack? I don’t know.”

“Was he in pain?”

“He was unconscious when we reached the shed, so I’m guessing no.”

“But we were here,” she argues, sounding hurt. “Didn’t he want to spend time with us? I thought he liked being with me.”

“He did. Oh, baby. He didn’t choose to have a heart attack. It just happened.”

“Does that mean it could happen to you?”

A heart attack can happen to anyone. But that isn’t what she means. She means, if my father had a heart attack, might I one day, too? Genetically speaking, yes, if I am Tom’s biological daughter. But am I? For a split second, I think of the scrap of gauze that I’ve squirreled away. It has bits of blood on it, and while I didn’t think corpses could bleed, ongoing CPR must have caused leakage when they inserted an IV line.

Will I use it? I can’t go there yet. As for what Joy heard, we haven’t discussed Anne’s accusations, and now isn’t the time.

Framing her face with both hands, I look her in the eye. “Anything can happen to anyone, but if I have trouble breathing, I’ll see a doctor. I am not going anywhere, Joy. Got that?” When she nods, I thumb the last tears from her cheeks and smile. “Want to read?”

The switch takes her off-guard, but the new light in her eyes says I’ve hit the jackpot. She wags a finger between us. “Together? Tonight?”

“Papa would want that,” I say, and the thought is a good one, if, again, more wishful than true. My father never read to me. He never read to any of us. Despot that he was, he thought we should read to ourselves. But I do like to think he approved of my reading to Joy. It plants another memory for my daughter that may not be based on fact, but that will benefit her in life. “Yes. Papa would want it.”

So we read. Though we haven’t finished The Art of Racing in the Rain, Joy picks Number the Stars from the bookshelf in my room. She isn’t as familiar with Lois Lowry as I was at her age, and there is an argument to be made that reading about the Holocaust is no more appropriate than the other after the day this has been. But the book, which made such a deep impression on me that I remember it to this day, is about bravery, heroism, and ultimate triumph. So we climb into bed and start.