“If she’d said no, were you just going to leave him in the nurse’s office?” Harrison asks.

“He’s coming,” I say. “Stop.”

“Someone has to tell him what’s going on,” Cary says. “Harrison, that’s you.”

“What? Why me? I don’t want—”

“Christ.” Cary buries his face in his hands for a long moment and when he finally raises his head, he looks ready to kill Harrison. “If I’m dragging your sorry ass through Cortege, you can just do what I fucking tell you. You know why you’ve never done anything that matters? Because you never do anything. Tell Trace. Now.”

Harrison leaves the room with tears trailing down his cheeks and I understand why he’s afraid to see Trace. Trace’s grief and anger mark him now. But Harrison made his choice.

“I’m going to divide Grace’s—” Cary takes a breath, trying to collect himself. “Her book bag. I’m going to divide everything inside it between us.”

“Okay.”

He goes to the library and thinking of him opening up her bag, everything she was going to take with her, makes me so sad and I try to think of Lily instead, seeing Lily, but it doesn’t help. Rhys watches me from his side of the table. There’s nothing in his eyes. His mouth is pinched.

“What?” I ask.

“I’m happy for you,” he says.

“Thank you.”

“I hope she’s there.”

“She will be.”

He nods but he doesn’t say anything and I know he doesn’t believe me, but I don’t care because I know it’s true. Lily will be there.

“When we went outside,” he says, “if it had worked out the way you wanted it to … you would have never seen the message. Or her. So I guess it’s good it didn’t work out.” I look away. “And your father’s there. You’ll see him.”

“He’s dead,” I say.

“How can you know that?”

“He’s dead to me. If he’s alive, we’re not taking him with us.”

“It’s his car, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m happy for you,” he says again.

But I think he means it less and less each time he says it.

Cary comes back and then Harrison comes back and tells us Trace has agreed to go but he wants us to pay our respects to Grace before we do and then I realize every time I envision us leaving through the library, she’s there. She’s with us, she’s alive. I erase her from the mental image but that feels so wrong so I let her stay, but I try to make her look like a ghost instead.

Which is worse.