Chapter 2 — Luke

My husband stepped in front of me and blocked my path.

Luke.

Six years married.

He was still wearing his perfectly pressed gray suit, and his tie had not so much as been loosened, and I remember registering that detail with a strange, floating clarity, because a man whose daughter has just died does not have an unloosened tie.

A man whose daughter has just died is not still pressed.

“We need to stay calm about this,” he said, and his voice was low, and controlled, and it was the control that first began to frighten me, more than any amount of grief could have.

“It was an accident, Clover.

The locks malfunctioned.

These things happen.

I’ve already spoken with the police, and everything is being handled.”

Everything is being handled. Less than an hour into the worst day of my life, and my husband had already moved through shock and grief and disbelief and out the other side into logistics.

He had already, somehow, arrived at handled.

I did not understand yet what I was looking at.