His parents arrived within the hour, and Nerissa came with them, carrying her four-month-old son in a designer carrier, and the room filled with Draycotts.

Anneliese looked at me in the bed, and at Brigid standing beside me, and produced a cool, rehearsed smile.

“Larisa.

We’re here to make sure this transition is handled with dignity, for everyone.” Rockwell did not look at me at all.

He looked at his son.

“Is the release signed?” “No, Dad,” Beau said, very quietly.

“It’s not.”

The word Anneliese chose has stayed with me: dignity. She said it the way that family said all their words, as an instrument rather than a meaning — dignity, in her mouth, meaning quiet, meaning managed, meaning no scene, meaning that I would take what I was given and spare the Draycott name the embarrassment of my grief.