“She’s already upset,” Penn says. “But it’s going to be fine,” he adds when I give him a look. “Just go home with Beckett, and we’ll figure this out there.”

Landry gives him a teary nod. Then I lead her the long way around the cemetery, hoping that no one stops us to ask if she’s okay. Or if I’ll give them an interview. On the way, I pass two different reporters talking to my classmates, asking them why they decided to come to the funeral for a baby they never met. A baby no one’s even identified yet.

“Because no one was there for her when she was alive,” Abby Winegarden says. “The world failed this poor baby. The least we can do is be here for her now.”

Landry bursts into fresh tears as we pass, and I hurry her toward my car.

She sniffles all the way home, but we don’t talk. I have a million questions, but I don’t know where to start. I’m so mad at her. For so many reasons. But I also feel guilty. She’s just a kid. I don’t know how this happened, but it shouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

Not by me.

At home, I park in the driveway, and Landry follows me inside, where she curls up on the couch with her knees tucked to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. “Do you want some hot chocolate?” I ask, but she only shakes her head. So I make a pot of coffee.

I’m starting to kind of like it, as long as my mug is half-full of milk and there’s enough sugar to settle into a thick syrup at the bottom.

Penn makes it home first, but Mom’s right behind him. The way she races down the driveway and then bursts into the house makes me think she misses the days when she drove a patrol car, so she could turn on the blue lights and go as fast as she wanted.

I’ve never seen the look that’s in her eyes as she shoves the front door closed and drops onto the couch next to Landry to pull her into a hug. It’s fear, but it’s also … guilt. It’s terror, and grief, and sympathy, and then finally, it’s just tears. It’s chest-heaving, hiccuping sobs, which Landry matches.

Which I’m having a hard time resisting myself.

But finally, when the tears have been exhausted, my mother lets her go and grabs a tissue to blot black streaks of makeup from her cheeks.

“Coffee?” I ask as I cradle my own mug.

“Please,” my mother says over Landry’s head. “Black.”