Landry climbs into the back seat without a word, so Jake can sit up front with me. She’s been quiet all morning, and I’m afraid she’s going to freeze to death during the service, because she refused to wear her coat. It’s pink, and she insisted that wasn’t appropriate for a funeral, so she borrowed a long-sleeved black sweater from me to go over her black jeans. The sweater’s big on her, and as she settles into the back seat, she seems to be trying to shrink into it. To let it swallow her.

I should have insisted she stay at home. But now that she knows about Dad’s connection to the baby—about our whole family’s connection—I can’t keep her out of this. I don’t think I can keep her out of anything anymore.

Landry was the only one who didn’t know Dad was using. She’d just started sixth grade when he came home from Afghanistan with a shattered leg. He died at the end of her seventh-grade year. She’d just turned thirteen.

All she really understood was that he’d gotten hurt and he was in a lot of pain, and the medication the doctors prescribed made him too tired to do much of anything except sit on the couch with her and watch cooking shows. I think he spent more time with Landry, back then, than with any of us. And in a way, I think she knew him best by the end.

Yet somehow, she also knew the least about what was really going on. Because she was just a kid.

But maybe that’s not true. Maybe none of us knew what was really going on. This funeral seems to be proof of that.

While we wait, a police car pulls into the parking lot. Doug Chalmers gets out of it and talks to the driver of the hearse. He’s our police escort for the processional, and he’s telling the driver that he’s ready to go. I know, because he did the same thing at my dad’s funeral. Only this time, there’s no family car to follow the hearse.

Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. My car is the family car, but no one knows that. And anyone who suspects it is right for the wrong reason; they still think I’m Lullaby Doe’s mother.

Doug gets back into his car and turns on the flashing lights. He pulls slowly out of the parking lot, and the hearse follows him. Sophia’s car is behind the hearse, then Cameron Mitchell’s, with Cabrini in his passenger seat. Half a dozen more cars follow Cameron’s before I can pull forward, but Penn’s truck is not among them. He and Daniela are meeting us at the cemetery.