“Chocolate chip and salted caramel.” I hold up a canister of large-grain salt and a bag of caramel chips. “We’re going to consume our weight in sugar today.”

She sits on her knees on one of the bar stools. “Can we skip the baking and just eat the dough?”

“No. Raw eggs. But we can eat the cookies right out of the oven. While they’re all melty and gooey.”

Landry laughs. “Clearly those are technical culinary terms.”

For the next hour and a half, everything feels normal. Penn comes home, sweaty from his run, as we’re pulling the second baking sheet out of the oven, and he joins us at the island, eating cookies straight off the pan. Gasping because they’re way too hot, as chocolate drips down our chins.

I want to live in this moment forever. I want to scoop us up, kitchen and all, and slap a glass globe over us and store us on the shelf in some museum of perfect moments. Because we deserve this one.

We eat fresh cookies for lunch.

That afternoon, with the taste of chocolate still sweet on my tongue, Sophia Nelson and I head over to Dunley’s Funeral Home and do the most depressing thing in the entire world.

We select a casket for a baby.

Landry wanted to come, but I drew the line at letting her help plan the funeral. Instead, Penn took her to pick out a Christmas tree from the lot set up in front of the Walmart in Daley.

Mr. Dunley is very accommodating, and I can’t tell whether that’s because he knows that the world will be watching Lullaby Doe’s funeral, or because Sophia basically tells him that cost is no issue. In a couple of hours, we have the whole thing planned for the afternoon of the twenty-fourth—Christmas Eve—and he assures us that three days is plenty of time to pull the whole thing together.

After the funeral home, we pick out a plot. I don’t think the cemetery has ever dealt with teenagers before, but the man who shows us our options is very nice. I’m not sure it matters which plot we pick, but Sophia is worried about which way the sun will glare on the attendees and how far people will have to walk from their cars.

I think that putting so much fuss into a funeral is a bit like spending all your time worrying about your wedding and none thinking about the actual marriage. It’s just one day. After the crowd has gone home, with any luck Lullaby’s secret relatives will be able to visit her in peace and privacy, and I doubt they’ll care about the sun shining in their faces.

God, please let someone claim her, even if only in private.