“I have to go,” I say to Dad, my voice catching. “Enjoy your steak.”

He stares after me as I storm out. I sit in the car for a few minutes, fogging up the windshield with my ragged breaths, trying to get myself together enough to drive.

“Please, Lemon,” I plead, stroking the steering wheel. “You can do this.”

I turn the key. She starts up with an unhealthy little sputter, but she starts.

“Thank you,” I breathe, and then I put her in gear, and I refuse to look at Dad’s face in the window as I make my getaway.

Sadie McIntyre is waiting on the front porch when I get back to the house, sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

“Don’t you park in the garage?” she asks as I come up the sidewalk, then figures it out and answers her own question. “Oh, right. Of course you don’t.”

“Did you want something?” I’m ready to take Mom’s approach and go to bed early so that this “tremendous” day will be over. Stick a fork in me; I’m done.

“I wanted to check up on you,” she says. “I haven’t, like, talked to you for a while. Not since . . .”

“Patrick,” I fill in. I lumber down onto the steps beside her. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”

“I had to work,” she says with a sideways glance: yep, guilt. “But those things are hard for me. It takes me back to when . . .”

“Me too.”

We sit for a minute, her smoking, me trying not to breathe it in.

“You know what I remember most, from my dad’s?” she says after a while. “People kept saying, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ That’s what they told me, over and over and over, like Don’t you worry, little girl, it will all be okay, because there’s got to be some bullshit overall rule of the universe that no matter what happens, no matter how bad it gets, everything will be all right in the end.”

“Yeah,” I murmur.

“And you know what I kept thinking? I kept thinking, That is a fucking lie. It is not going to be all right. It will never be all right, ever, ever again. So stop fucking lying to me.”

“You thought that? How old were you, fifteen, that you thought ‘stop fucking lying’?”

Her blue eyes crinkle up in amusement. “I had an advanced vocabulary for my age.”

“So I gather.”

She laughs and smokes.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” I say after a minute. “You came to Ty’s funeral, but I didn’t go to your dad’s.”

She shrugs. “I wasn’t there for you when your dad checked out, either. Plus I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate you being there at the time, anyway.”

“And knowing me, I probably would have said something stupid like ‘It’s going to be all right.’”

We both smirk.

“Well, you don’t know until you know,” she says. Then she’s ready to change the subject. “So how’s it going with the spirit situation? Have you seen him again?” she asks. “Since you gave the letter to Ashley? I want details.”

I can’t help but tense up. “I’ve seen him.”

“A lot?”

“Yes. A lot.” Like halfway through the state of Missouri in the backseat of the car a lot. “Anyway, there’s something else now.”

“Something else?” Sadie tries to sound like it’s no big deal, but I can tell she’s interested. She’s able to see this Ty ghost thing as a simple mystery to be solved. Because it’s not her house. Not her life.

“You remember the collage Ty made, for his own funeral? He put all of these pictures in a special frame?”

She looks appropriately somber. “Yes.”

“And there was a blank space in the collage.”

She nods.

I sigh. “That space was supposed to be for a picture of my dad. And I found the picture. And I feel like Ty wants . . . he would want me to give it to my dad.”

“Oh. Okay. That sounds complicated.”

“You’re telling me.” I lean my head back and wish there were stars to gaze up at, but the sky is muted by clouds, a dark, oppressive gray. It’s March, but I can smell snow in the air. It feels like this winter is hanging on, that it’s never going to end. I sigh. “I do not want to deal with my dad.”

“I get that. Your dad’s a douche,” Sadie says.

I sit up. “What’d you say?”

“Your mom, she was—I mean, she is so great.” Sadie puts her chin in her hand, her eyes lost in thought. “I always wished my mom could be more like your mom. My mom is so uptight about everything. Your mom was so laid-back and funny. She used to make pancakes shaped like teddy bears, with the chocolate chip eyes and the strawberry mouth, and she sewed you all these great costumes for Halloween, and you always got the best birthday cakes. My mom . . .” She shakes her head.

“Your mom was busy. She had a lot of kids to take care of,” I say.

“I wish—” She stops herself.

It’s not that hard to figure out what she was going to say. She wishes her dad were here.

Because her dad was the kind of dad all the kids wanted their dads to be. He was a fourth-grade teacher, but one of the cool ones, one of those who wore dress shirts rolled up at the sleeves, who could play Bruce Springsteen and Coldplay on his guitar, who didn’t look dumb in sunglasses. He had this big booming voice that made you sit up and listen, but he was always in a good mood.