“Kind of?” Penn’s voice is closed off again. “Like I said, I wasn’t thinking straight. But she would have told me … I mean, Amira would have said something, if …”

My mother’s sigh carries a world of doubt.

My brother slept with my best friend in my car.

I’m not sure why that matters. But it does. It matters that I’ve been driving around for seven months in that car, with no idea that it could be where—

Oh my god. Lullaby Doe could have been conceived in my car.

I back away from my brother’s door as quietly as I can. In the living room, I grab my keys and the twenty-dollar bill Mom set out for dinner, and I shout, “I’m going for pizza!” But in the driveway, after I start the engine, I can only stare at the dashboard while my brain pelts thoughts at me like a mental hailstorm.

I pull out my phone and open the calendar, then I count back to my father’s death. Thirty-two weeks.

Lullaby Doe was born one week ago, at around thirty weeks’ gestation.

Amira could very well have stopped coming over—stopped trying to pull me out of my grief—because of things getting weird with Penn. Or because she was secretly pregnant with my niece.

Numb, I drop my phone in the tray between the seats and shift into reverse to back out of the driveway. And though I make it to the Little Caesars twenty-five minutes later, I have no memory of actually driving to Daley.

Mom doesn’t go back to work after dinner. She just shoves the leftover pizza into the fridge and puts a load of towels in the washer. Then she helps Landry with her algebra.

I try to catch Penn alone, unsure whether I intend to interrogate him about Amira or apologize—again—for telling Mom about his Titans shirt. But as soon as he’s done eating, though he hardly touched his pizza, he changes into running clothes and leaves the house on foot.

When he gets home, just after nine, his eyes are red and his nose is running, and I’m not sure all of that is from the cold. He goes straight into the bathroom to shower, then he locks himself in his room. Mom sees me eyeing his door and tells me to give him some space. So I close myself into my own room and try to focus on my homework.

A few minutes later, the rattle of the sign against Landry’s door tells me she’s doing the same thing. Which leaves Mom all alone in the kitchen.

Though the truth is that she’d pretty much be alone even if we were all three in there with her.