“You sure you want to do this?” Land asked, eyebrows raised. “I’d advise against it.” He hitched his pants up. “I’ve seen a lot of bodies in my day, and once you see ’em, you can’t unsee ’em.”

I barely glanced at him. “I’m sure.”

“Always were a stubborn one,” Land muttered under his breath, but waved me forward to where Cal was standing next to a set of swinging doors. “Don’t touch her.” Land pointed at me. “Not at all. I’m gonna watch through the window just to make sure.”

“You want me to go in with you?” Cal asked, but I shook my head. “All right, then,” he said. “She’s on the left.” He laid a hand on my back. “I’ll be waiting right out here.”

The door swung closed behind me, and I paused, took in the cracked linoleum floor with a drain in the center, the rolling cart I assumed held instruments no one wanted me to see because it had been haphazardly draped with a cloth, the same flickering fluorescent lights as the hallway. And two rolling stretchers in front of me, one on the left, one on the right, the bodies still encased in black body bags, although the one on the left had been unzipped.

I stared at the points of Junie’s toes sticking up from the open body bag. Wondered, fleetingly, if she’d lost her shoes somewhere along the way or if they’d taken them off of her once she got here. Keeping my eyes on the lower half of her body, I moved up next to her, let my hand hover over her arm. I could feel the coldness radiating off her. My girl, who always ran hot, even on the most frigid days.

“This isn’t fair,” I said, voice low and choked. But it was a stupid thing to say, a worthless lament. Life was never fair. I knew that better than anyone. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and then raised my eyes slowly upward, girding myself one inch at a time. But it wasn’t as terrible as I’d expected, because it wasn’t really my daughter lying there. My daughter—who loved pasta and the color yellow, who was prone to headaches and worried her legs were too long, who snorted when she laughed and hated her freckles—wasn’t there anymore. This was the shell of a girl, one I hardly recognized as my own. Chestnut hair matted with blood, face chalky white from the nose up, a red horror below. Blood smeared across her chin and caked on her left cheek, her shirt soaked black. Her throat was laid open, almost ear to ear.

I had been the first person to hold her when she came into the world. I witnessed her first word, her first steps, her first fever, laugh, tantrum, crush, disappointment. But not this. Her last breath, her final seconds on earth. I wasn’t there in the moment when she needed me the most. All my years of trying hadn’t mattered because in the end, I had failed her. I leaned forward and kissed the air above her unmarred forehead. I breathed in, hoping for some last remnant of her. But all I could smell was blood and new-fallen snow.