I tug at my fingers, repeat a new mantra. Dad is dead. Dad is dead. But I can feel that something has come loose inside, like a plug has been pulled. I shift in my seat, unable to fight a rising hysteria that slithers across my skin. My hands shake. Dad is dead. Dad is dead. With rubbery legs, I push to standing. “What will I do without him?” I ask no one in particular. Kiko, who stands at the front of the room, stops talking, looks at me with such sadness in her eyes I turn away and scan all the faces. Some I know, many I don’t, and it nearly undoes me. I grab on to the back of my chair for support, find Ruth’s face. “When did I see him last?” When she doesn’t answer right away, I reach for my notebook, flip through it, tearing pages in my desperation because I can’t find anything. “Please, tell me when I saw him.” Pitiful, pathetic, everything I don’t want to be, I sound like in this moment.

“You were with him, Claire. We both were.” It’s my mother’s voice. She stands in front of me. “He wanted to talk to you.” She inhales a ragged breath. “About me and about—”

“What about you?” My pen presses into the pages, ready to record everything, but Tate stays my hand, holds up a notebook he has already filled with information. My breathing expands and I let the pen fall away to face my mother.

“He wanted us to be a family again,” she says, and her voice is steady even as I see the tiny trembles in her chin. “I know how hard it is for you to accept, but I’m not the same person you remember. And Vance thought it was time to make that stick, to help all of us figure out a way to be together.” Her eyes travel over my shoulder. “All of us.”

Ruth puts an arm around Mom and the gesture surprises me. Mom and Ruth were tight once, but she hurt Ruth with her drinking too. “He was proud of Alice, proud of how hard she’s fought to overcome her addiction,” says Ruth. “He wanted you to see that too.” She glances at Mom. “So much has changed, Claire. Vance had a feeling that it was time to put things right—”

“No, Ruth,” Mom says. “Not now.”