“It is.”

“This is Annie.” She clears her throat. “Carly’s best friend.”

My eyes slide closed. I saw Miles just last night after he came to pick up Winter from our ice cream party and he didn’t mention getting in touch with anyone, so he must have talked to her this morning, which means she just found out about her friend.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say quietly, knowing that is the worst thing to say. But what else is there?

“Me too.” She sniffles. “I just spoke to her, she said she was going to come visit me and the boys for Christmas. Now I don’t even know what to do.”

“Did she have any family there?” I ask quietly.

“No, none that she talked to anyways.”

I listen to her drag in a shaky breath.

“I—” She starts to sob, and I drop my forehead to the steering wheel as my heart breaks for her. “Th—The detective gave me the number to have her body rel—released. I—I don’t have any money, I just—I can’t afford to have her buried,” she cries, and I shut my eyes.

“Don’t worry about that, I’ll take care of her,” I promise softly.

“She di—She didn’t want to be buried, she told me that once.”

“I’ll make sure she’s cremated.”

“I hate this, I hate that I can’t come there and see her—that I can’t help,” she says as a tiny voice in the background asks why she’s crying, and she tells him that her heart is hurt. Then the baby who had stopped crying starts again. “I have to go.”

“Okay, sure,” I whisper.

“Will you—Will you see if you can get me her chest? I—I know it’s weird, but she had kept all of our concert tickets and stuff from when we were in school in there and I’d like to have all of it.”

“I’ll see what I can do, and Annie?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me anytime.”

“Okay, bye.” She hangs up and I lift my head from where it’s still resting against the steering wheel then check the time. My dad should be here in about ten minutes but knowing him he’ll be early because he always is. Lifting the papers off my lap I find Carly’s personal e-mail along with some pieces of information that might be helpful to get into her accounts and type it all into the notes app on my phone. As I’m tucking the papers away, I hear the rumble of an engine and look out the driver’s side window.

“Great.” I mutter under my breath as my brother Bax parks his sixty-four mustang in the spot next to my car. When he looks my way, I lift my hand and wave and he jerks up his chin. It figures that my dad would call in reinforcements. Even though my brothers are all younger than me and Harmony they have always acted like Nalia, Harmony and I are their little sisters and that we need constant protection from the outside world. Opening the door, I get out and walk to where Bax is standing on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.