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  Lilian’s sister, Alexandra. Allie’s godmother. He’d argued against naming his daughter after her. Even Lilian wasn’t overly fond of the name, but he couldn’t argue with her reasons. “Alexandra is family, Braden. The only sister I have.” And that ended his resistance because he knew, all too well, that family is a fact that refuses alteration.

  “We have a situation,” Alexandra says now. “Please tell me you’re sober.”

  “I am never sober, thank God. Where is Lilian and why on earth are you calling me?”

  A lie. He is momentarily and temporarily sober, the one problem for which he has a solution. But he doesn’t reach to fill his empty glass. Not just yet.

  Alexandra makes a strangled gasping sound that from any other human might be a sob. He’s still trying to picture that emotion on her when she finally says the thing she’s called him to say.

  “Lilian has gone to be with Jesus.”

  Braden waits for these words to arrange themselves into a meaningful sequence. Clearly, Alexandra doesn’t mean to use the euphemism for death. Lilian has never been marked for death, she is beyond and above it. So “gone to be with Jesus” must mean she’s becoming a nun, or going on a religious retreat, maybe attending an intensive Pentecostal camp meeting.

  “Braden?”

  “I don’t think I heard you.”

  “Lilian has passed on to the other side. She’s singing with the angels now.”

  Braden fills his glass, watching his hand lift the bottle and pour as if it doesn’t belong to him, as if he is a bystander whose heart will not be shattered by the next thing Alexandra is going to say.

  “There was a car accident. A crash. They think she fell asleep.”

  He notices, from a vantage point up near the ceiling, that he can’t breathe, that his heart is running off with a rhythm of its own. Watches himself slide down the cabinets to the tacky, unwashed kitchenette floor. Words are expected, and he utters the first ones that come into his head.

  “When? How are the kids?”

  “Monday.”

  Braden does the math, the number of days from Monday to Thursday divided by the distance between him and the drink he just poured, multiplied by the enormity of his failure and loss. All the calculations come out to the same answer: he is a miserable excuse for a human being.

  Monday.

  The day he started drinking again after nearly six months of sobriety.

  Monday.

  The day he was supposed to meet his daughter face-to-face after eleven years of absence.

  If Lilian had to leave this world and abandon the kids, why did it have to be on that particular Monday, of all the days in the year?

  “Braden! Are you listening?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I need you to sign some papers. I just flew in this morning and—”

  “Three days?” He’s still stuck on the time frame. If Lilian dead is incomprehensible, the idea of time, of the kids alone for not only hours but days, is a concept beyond his grasp. Just one more minute, and he thinks he’s going to be angry about that. Someone, namely Alexandra, could have tried harder to reach him.

  “Allie stayed with a friend, but she can’t stay there forever. You need to sign papers so she can come home with me.”

  Braden closes his eyes, listens to the sound of his own breathing, the music swirling in the room. Not the first time he’s heard the cello in a quiet room, as clearly as if someone is playing right next to him. The Bach in C Minor this time, only it’s discordant and wrong, tuned flat so it grates on his eardrums. His throat contracts around the words stuck sideways in his throat. It takes three tries before he can spit them out.

  “Where is Trey?”

  Silence.

  “You keep saying Allie. What about Trey?”

  “Trey was in the car.”

  “Is he hurt? How badly? Which hospital?”

  If Lilian is dead—still an if, a big one—if Lilian is dead, the embargo is over. He can go home. He will go to Allie, and to Trey, he will—

  “Trey didn’t make it. He’s gone.”

  Braden can’t feel his body anymore, at all, not the restricted breathing or the erratic heart rate or the sinking in his belly; the whole thing has gone as numb as his goddamn hands. He bangs the back of his head against the cabinet, seeking sensation.

  Thud.

  A starburst of pain behind his eyes. Better.

  Thud.

  The pain clears him, puts his soul back in his body. Sensation comes flooding back, and with it come words and the anger that has been waiting for the cue to come onstage.

  “Allie has been alone with this? For three fucking days? Jesus Christ, Alexandra. You should have called me!”

  “Do me a favor and keep your profanity to yourself. I didn’t have your number, and Allie wouldn’t give it to me or to the social worker. She was very clear. She doesn’t want you.”

  Of course she doesn’t want him. He left her, and then he stood her up, and then her mother and her brother died. The only surprise in all of this is the amount of pain carried by those precise words, “she doesn’t want you.”

  Braden is familiar with pain. He welcomes it in, cherishes it as penance.

  “As soon as the funeral is over, I’ll be taking Allie with me to Toronto,” Alexandra says. “She has a passport. We can get her visa taken care of later. I just need you to sign to let me take her across the border for now.”

  “Is that what Allie wants? To go to Canada?”

  “She can’t possibly know what she wants, she’s just lost her entire family. I will do what is best for her, even if it is difficult.”

  “Not her entire family,” Braden whispers.

  “I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

  “She’s not orphaned quite yet,” Braden says more loudly. “Where is she, Alexandra? At the house? I want to see her.”

  “I’ve just told you, she doesn’t want—”

  “You also just said she doesn’t know what she wants. I need to see my daughter.”

  “Oh please. What use could you be to her? You’ll just muddy the waters. It’s best she doesn’t see you. I’m only contacting you to sign the consent—”

  “No.” The word feels round and solid and right. Perfectly tuned.

  “Braden. I know it’s too much to expect you to be fully rational, but—”

  “I’m coming home. Tell Allie that.”

  Braden hangs up before Alexandra can argue. Three incompatible thoughts keep playing on an endless loop in his head.

  Lilian and Trey are dead.

  Allie doesn’t want to talk to him.

  Allie needs him.

  It’s the last one that gets him up off the floor, that empowers him to pour the brand-new bottle of Jack down the drain, the contents of the glass behind it, without taking a single taste.

  Allie needs me.

  He repeats this like an incantation while he uses his phone to search for the time and place of the funeral. Three days away—just enough time to get sober.

  One visit to the doctor. One trip to the pharmacy. Three days of Librium. Half a bottle of vitamin B. Another mathematical equation that should add up to Braden sober in time for a Sunday-afternoon funeral.

  He tells himself he won’t make a scene. He’ll show up, find an opportunity to talk to Allie. Explain why he didn’t meet her and how it has everything to do with how much he loves her, rather than how little. And then . . .

  It depends. If she needs him, then nothing will ever drag him away again. If she doesn’t? He doesn’t dare focus on that. Get sober. Go to the funeral. One day, one breath at a time.

  Chapter Four

  ALLIE

  Allie stares, unblinking, at the two coffins on the platform, stares until her vision blurs and doubles, until her eyes burn and water. And when her eyelids close against her will, she focuses in again, over and over.

  I did this. I will not look away.

  On her right, Aunt Alexandra
sits upright and stiff, as if rigor mortis has reached out tendrils from the coffins to their front-row viewing seat and frozen her still-living muscles. Her brand-new black dress is as stiff as she is and gives off a queasy chemical smell that makes Allie breathe through her mouth and hope to God she doesn’t puke. On the other side, blessedly warm and human and normal, sits Steph, her best friend since forever.

  “Death sucks so hard,” Steph murmurs.

  Allie doesn’t look away from the coffins. The words make a lump in her throat. Her eyes blur with tears, but she manages to blink them back. She hasn’t cried yet. Not when she first heard the news, not when she watched her brother die, not even when they wouldn’t let her go home. When she starts, which she knows she will eventually, she thinks it might kill her. She’s got no huge objection to dying, she just doesn’t want to explode right here, in front of all of these people.

  If she could die quietly, just close her story as if it’s a book she started reading and decided she didn’t like, she would welcome that. But she has to keep turning the pages; she’s not allowed to quit, because this is her fault and it’s the punishment she deserves.

  The funeral passes in a blur. Thank God the organist plays Muzak, nothing profound enough to break through the coating of ice and get to her heart. She feels flat and detached, as if the coffins are two big black boxes with nothing inside them. A theatrical staging. A play she’s watching.

  Until.

  Until it’s all over and they are filing out of the church. Everybody is staring at her, she knows it, even though she keeps her eyes down. One foot in an unfamiliar shiny black shoe setting itself down on carpet, another foot in an unfamiliar shiny black shoe repeating the movement. It’s an ugly carpet. Mustardy, with flecks of blue and green and brown.

  At the back of the church, the gauntlet very nearly run, an impulse draws her eyes upward. A gaze meets hers. Eyes like her own, a face both familiar and strange. She feels a jolt of connection and recognition that very nearly trips her. Steph’s hand steadies her, nudges her forward, and she keeps walking, but only as far as the foyer, where she plants her feet and waits.

  She watches him walk down the aisle. He’s taller than most of the crowd, so she can study his face. He doesn’t look like the picture she’s kept hidden under her mattress all these years, the way other kids hide contraband magazines or cigarettes or pot. His hair is graying at the temples. His right cheek is marred by a long white scar.

  It turns out her heart isn’t completely frozen after all. Emotions surge through her, threaten to swamp her. Anger. Loss. Love. All in equal measure. She blocks his path, and he comes to a halt about a foot in front of her. The people behind him stop, confused, and then create an alternate course, flowing around the two of them as if they are an island in the middle of a river.

  “So you are still alive,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She’s not sure if he means he’s sorry he’s still alive, or what all he’s sorry for. His eyes look anguished. His hands tremble visibly. It’s this, the weakness on his part, that sets flame to her anger.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  Aunt Alexandra pivots away from an embrace with a weeping woman and puts a restraining hand on Allie’s arm.

  “Language,” she whispers. Don’t make a scene, her expression says. Allie’s own hands are clenched into fists. Maybe she’ll hit him, beat her fury out on his chest. Scream at the top of her lungs.

  Her aunt steps between them, giving her father a stiff-armed hug. “Braden. I’m so glad you were able to make it.” Allie can hear the insincerity like a badly tuned instrument.

  Her father’s gaze doesn’t break from Allie’s. They might as well be alone rather than in the middle of a crowd, both of them oblivious to Alexandra, to the press of other bodies.

  “I didn’t know,” he says. “Until Thursday.”

  It’s a lame excuse, and only answers part of her question.

  Where have you been all of my fucking life? Why didn’t you meet me like you said you would? Where were you when I got the call about the accident, when I watched my brother die? That’s what she really wants to know.

  She feels the tears encroaching, and with them helplessness and abandonment and futility. She squeezes her hands into tighter fists, clenches her teeth, focuses all of her willpower on holding them back, but they get past her, anyway.

  Damn it. Damn you.

  Aunt Alex clamps a hand around her wrist and tugs. “Come, dear. We must go to the graveside. They are waiting.”

  Allie doesn’t budge. “Dad comes, too.”

  “Allie—”

  “We need to talk, and he has a way of vanishing.”

  “He can meet us at the cemetery. The car is waiting.”

  Allie feels her spine stiffen, and she turns on her aunt. “I’m not going without him. He can ride with us.”

  People are staring, whispering.

  “Is that the father?”

  “Pretty sure. He’s been gone so long . . .”

  “Ran off and left poor Lilian with two kids to raise . . .”

  Allie doesn’t care, but her aunt shoots a venomous glare at her father, then yanks harder on her arm.

  “Come. Now.”

  Allie’s hand clenches around her father’s. “You are coming, too.”

  His body is as taut as hers. She can feel it in his hand. For a moment, she thinks he’ll refuse, that she’ll be towed away and lose him again forever, but as she begins to move and the tension increases on their linked hands, he takes a step to follow her, and then another, all the way out to the car.

  A moment of hesitation at the open door, where it all hangs in the balance. He sucks in a huge breath and slides into the seat beside her. Round one. She still has a battle to fight, because as much as she hates her father at this moment, she is not going to Canada with Aunt Alexandra, and he is the only one who can save her from that.

  Chapter Five

  BRADEN

  Braden is in desperate need of a drink.

  The church was bad, worse than he’d anticipated. There had been a photographic memorial to endure, for one thing. Lilian, still beautiful but aged by life and responsibility. Trey, young and vibrant and golden. In every picture, he was surrounded by friends, always laughing, eyes looking directly out at Braden.

  Where were you? Why did you miss this?

  Impossible to imagine that face, that energy, confined to a casket. As for Lilian . . .

  God. He and Lilian were married in that church. Every time he closed his eyes to blot out the stark reality of those two coffins, he saw her in her wedding dress with pearls starring her dark hair and her sweet lips murmuring “I do,” in response to the minister’s question. She’d looked like a goddess to him, so far above him he’d nearly knelt before her, worshipping her more than the God who presided over the union.

  Well, he’s been punished for that, and now he’s being punished again.

  Which is only fair. Of course he can’t expect to just walk back into Allie’s life as if he never left her. He deserves all of the rage his daughter can aim in his direction. The only thing that matters is whether or not he can be of any help or comfort to her.

  For all she’d said she wants to talk to him, she utters not a word all the way to the cemetery, keeping her face turned toward the window. Alexandra, on the other hand, holds nothing back.

  “You have plenty of nerve showing up here today, Braden Healey. All of these years you’ve left Lilian alone to do everything. Raise two kids on her own, work, manage the house. And now here you are, waltzing into the funeral as if you own the church. You have absolutely no right to be here. No right to grieve.”

  The venom finds its mark, dropping him into a flashback as dramatically as if he’s just stepped into a sinkhole.

  The car vanishes and he sits in a different church, staring dry eyed at a different coffin. His hands are swathed in bandages. His face feels stiff and lopsided, still sw
ollen from a laceration on his cheek, the stitches pulling tight with any change in his expression. Beside him, his sister weeps for her dead husband, her shoulders shaking, but Braden has no tears.

  I’ve got no right to grieve.

  Mitch lies in a coffin because of him. There’s a gap in his memory you could drive a tractor through, but he knows it’s his fault.

  “Are you even listening?” Alexandra pokes him with a sharp elbow.

  “Sorry,” he says, shaken, trying to surface. His entire body feels cold. His cheek throbs, as if the injury is still fresh. His hands are shaking.

  The limo turns into the cemetery. Crown Heights. He’s relieved to see that there are trees, that Lilian and Trey will be resting in a beautiful place.

  A teenage girl is waiting when the car draws up. Black hoops in her nose and eyebrows, black eyeliner, stark black hair. Braden remembers her from the church; she was standing at his daughter’s shoulder. Now she flings both arms around Allie’s neck in a tempestuous hug.

  “You okay?”

  “Ish.”

  The girl stares unabashedly at Braden. “He doesn’t look like the pictures. I mean, he does, but he doesn’t. You know?”

  “Steph!”

  “Right. Just saying—”

  “Perhaps we can chat later,” Alexandra suggests. “We need to move to the graveside.”

  She leads the way. Allie and Steph follow, and Braden trails behind, wishing he could blend into the anonymous crowd rather than stand with the family. He catches a glimpse of a woman who jars his memory. Unusually tall; thick waves of auburn hair. She turns her face away before he can place how he knows her, and then he sees the burial site and that consumes all of his attention.

  The two coffins, suspended by a series of straps and pulleys over the waiting holes in the raw earth, are brutal. In an agony of helplessness, he sees the blood drain from Allie’s face, watches her begin to shiver.

  The sermon is mercifully brief, and he thinks maybe it’s over, maybe they can go somewhere, anywhere, away from here, but then four solemn young people file up to the graveside, all carrying instruments. Two violins. A viola.