“I couldn’t! I was scared! So Norah and I snuck into the locker room. No one was supposed to be in there, because of the fresh paint. We thought someone would come looking for us. We thought we’d get caught. But no one came.” Landry shrugs. “There were forty kids in our group. I guess no one noticed two missing.”

Mom looks like she’s going to be sick. “So you were all alone, going through that.”

“No. I had Norah. She watched videos and talked me through it, but mostly we just tried to be quiet. The internet said it could take all day, but it only took about five hours.”

Though it sounded like her contractions actually started long before she realized she was in labor.

“But something went wrong. She wasn’t breathing. She never opened her eyes or cried, and I don’t know what I did wrong!”

Penn’s hand is clenched around the other arm of the chair. I’m staring at my sister through a sea of unshed tears.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” my mother tells her. “Sometimes babies just don’t make it.”

“But if I’d gone to the hospital—”

“We don’t know that,” I tell her, just like Mom told me last week. “That might not have changed anything.”

Landry gives me a teary nod.

“So, when you realized there was nothing you could do for her?” Mom says. “What did you do then?”

“Norah helped me get cleaned up. She had Tylenol in her purse, and there was a pad dispenser on the wall of the locker room. We’d used towels we found on a shelf, and she put them in a garbage bag she found with some cleaning supplies in a closet. She sprayed out the shower—that’s where it all happened—then she took that trash bag … somewhere. Outside. A dumpster, maybe. Or maybe she just hid it. I didn’t ask. I just let her take care of everything while I … I held the baby.” Landry’s eyes fill with fresh tears, but she blinks them back. “We’d wrapped her in a shirt we found in Penn’s duffel bag.”

“Why did you have my bag?” Penn asks.

“The zipper on my backpack broke, and you’d left your duffel in the kitchen for a few days, so I figured you didn’t want it anymore, so …” She shrugs. “I thought I’d save Mom some money and use your old bag instead of asking for a new one. I’d been carrying it for about a week, before that day.”

Only …“Landry, that was Jake’s bag,” I tell her.

“Then why was Penn’s shirt in it?”

Penn shrugs. “I must have mistaken his duffel for mine. I didn’t realize I’d left my shirt in it.” He frowns. “I thought Mom threw out the shirt after I ripped the underarm seam.”