Ty's face was a little green. He started to say, "Hand what over?" but I gave him a look that said he didn't want to mess with me. Ty brought his hands out from behind his back and produced their hastily stubbed-out cigarettes. They'd put them out on a piece of my porcelain tea set, the thoughtful little sweethearts.

At least it's not pot, I thought. I stared at the plate, then rolled my eyes. "Where's the rest?"

"The rest?" squeaked Damian.

"The pack. Where is it?"

They exchanged glances and then decided there was no getting past me. Ty opened up the My Little Pony Dream Castle, where he'd stuffed the pack of Virginia Slims.

I choked back a laugh. "Where did you get these?"

Silence.

"Tell me or I tell the grown-ups."

"I swiped them from my mom's purse," Damian confessed.

I rubbed my eyes. Sighed again. "You guys. Wow."

"Please don't tell," pleaded Patrick, almost in tears. "My dad would be so mad."

"You know why he would be mad?" I asked. "Because only morons smoke cigarettes." I looked at Damian. "Sorry, Damian, but your mom's a moron."

He didn't argue.

I held up the Virginia Slims pack. "These kill you. It's slow so you don't really notice, but they will kill you. They also make your breath smell bad and turn your teeth yellow and wreck your voice and stain your fingers and empty your wallet and about a hundred other terrible things."

"We were trying it out once," Ty said. "We weren't going to start smoking or anything."

"The girls at school think it's cool," Patrick said defensively.

"Right. The girls in your middle school. Whose center of the universe right now is the fricking Rainbow Loom. I'll tell you what, I would never, ever kiss a guy who smoked. Uck." Not that I would ever kiss a guy period, I thought wistfully. This was a few months before the infamous Nathan Thaddeus Dillinger II.

Damian and Patrick looked thoughtful.

"So are you going to tell Mom?" Ty asked.

I thought about it for like 2 seconds. "No. But only if you guys promise me you'll never do something this moronic again."

"We promise," they said immediately.

I made them pinky swear. The most solemn oath.

"Lexie?" Mom yelled from the back porch. "Boys?"

I turned to the 3 amigos. "Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go straight into the house and say I told you to wash your disgusting boy hands. Which you will do. Then we have to do something about your breath."

"We could use Dad's mouthwash," Ty suggested.

"Too obvious. I'll bring by a box of Tic Tacs while you're in there. You'll come out and have dinner, yum yum yum, and then Damian, you're going to go home and tell your mom you stole her cigarettes, and give them back."

Damian's face went pale. "What?"

"You're going to tell her you stole her cigarettes because cigarettes kill people, and you don't want her to die. She'll forgive you if you put it like that. Okay? Got it? Do we understand the plan?"

3 nods.

I marched them down the ladder and out of the playhouse.

"You have like the best sister ever," I heard Patrick say to Ty as we crossed the yard.

"She's all right."

And that's the last thing I remember about Patrick. Saying I was the best sister.

Wishing that he had a big sister like me.

MOM IS MAKING A GREEN BEAN Ca.s.sEROLE.

Her hands tremble slightly as she trims the beans with a sharp knife, but she doesn't cut herself. She scoops the beans up and delivers them into a pot of rapidly boiling water. She waits until they're tender but still slightly crunchy. She drains them over a sieve in the kitchen sink. The steam fogs her gla.s.ses. Then she leaves them hot in the sink to open a can of cream of mushroom soup, which she whips together with a cup of milk, a quarter cup of french fried onions, a dash of salt, an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper, and a tablespoon of melted b.u.t.ter. She pours the frothy mix into a gla.s.s baking dish. She adds the green beans, stirs them gently, then covers the dish with foil. She puts the dish in the oven. She sets the timer.

We wait.

Outside, a single chickadee is perched on a branch near the kitchen window, chirping. Clouds are moving across the sky. Snow is falling in slow motion.

The timer goes off. Mom dons a pair of mitts, reaches into the heat of the oven, and draws out the dish. She sets it on a hot pad on the counter and carefully rearranges another layer of french fried onions around the edges.

I'm reminded of Christmas. Mom used to make green bean ca.s.serole at Christmas. She was never a top chef or anything, but it was a good ca.s.serole. I would watch her, just this way, as she put it together.

This was the part where my hand would snake out and steal some onions.

This was the part where, if she caught me, Mom would smack me on the wrist with her wooden spoon. Then she'd take a handful of onions for herself, and she'd smile, and I'd smile, and we'd eat them like it was some kind of marvelous secret between us. They were salty and left a layer of grease on my tongue, and I loved them.

There was no green bean ca.s.serole this Christmas. For obvious reasons. We ate pity food for Christmas this year.

Mom finishes dispensing the onions and returns the dish to the oven, uncovered this time. She resets the timer.

We wait.

The timer rings again. Mom gets the mitts and takes the ca.s.serole out. The onions on top have baked to a lovely golden brown. The air smells savory and rich. She puts the dish on the counter to cool.

At the sink Mom scrubs her hands in a way that reminds me of a surgeon prepping. She dries her hands and removes her ap.r.o.n to reveal her simple black sheath dress. She smooths the fabric down her sides and pads off on bare feet with unpainted toes to retrieve her shoes, a pair of plain black pumps. She gracelessly leans against the table to slip them on one foot at a time. Then she goes to the counter and measures out a new layer of foil for the ca.s.serole. She takes a black marker out of a drawer and writes From Joan and Alexis Riggs across the top. She folds it over the ca.s.serole. She puts the dish into an insulated bag that will keep it warm.

Then she picks up her purse and checks its contents-lipstick, powder, a card for the Murphys, which she had me sign earlier.

It says, With sorrow for your loss.

We have become the observers of tragedy.

Mom checks her watch. She palms her car keys. Then she looks at me.

"Are you ready?" she asks.

I nod.

She brushes off the shoulders of my black cable-knit sweater.

"All right," she says, her voice as flat as if we were making a trip to the dentist. "Let's go."

Patrick's funeral is held in the Cathedral of the Risen Christ, a different church than where we held Ty's funeral. Practically the entire school turns up, even the teachers and the princ.i.p.al and the office staff. Mom and I sit in the back of the sanctuary, and try to ignore the way people are looking at us, two ways, actually: (a) They know that this funeral is going to be particularly hard for us, and they feel sorry for that, but they need to focus on the Murphys now, please understand. Which we do. And (b) we shouldn't be here. Our kid infected this kid with the suicide disease. We should feel ashamed of this. Which we also kind of do.

Maybe they're right. Maybe we shouldn't have come, but Mom wants to be here, if only to lend silent support, if only to prove to the Murphys that survival is possible.

So we sit in the back.

There's no viewing this time. Closed casket. Because it was death by train.

Patrick's casket is white and shiny and edged with silver, like the hood of an expensive car. On top is a heap of red roses that I can smell from here. One rose by itself smells nice, but twenty-four of them fill the room with such a cloying sweetness that it overwhelms everything else. It makes my stomach turn.

Still, there are worse things to smell than roses.

At the foot of the casket Patrick's dad stands next to a giant framed photograph of a younger, happier version of Patrick. His dad greets the people who line up to pay their respects, like some kind of twisted wedding reception in reverse. With the men he shakes hands, but it's not so much a shaking motion as them grabbing his hand and holding it for a few seconds, then letting go. The women give him awkward, tearful hugs.

I can't hear what they're saying, but I know that it's variants of "I'm sorry," and "Patrick was a good person/kid/student/human being/member of the swim team," and "Call us if you need anything," and Patrick's father is saying, "Thank you," and "I know," and "I will."

Even though he probably won't.

Patrick's mother died when he was a kid. Car accident. So they've been through this before. He has a younger sister, but she's not standing with her dad. I locate her, already seated in the front pew. Her head is down, and I wonder if she's reading the program or praying or staring at her toes.

I stared at my toes, when it was me sitting at the front of the church.

The organist starts to play. People file into the pews and stand, singing.

Mom hands me the program. On the front is a smaller black-and-white picture of Patrick, smiling his awkward smile, and a Bible verse, Romans 8:3839: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ty had the same scripture. It must be the go-to Bible pa.s.sage for suicides.

The song fades away. Patrick's dad joins the sister in the front row. The priest in his black robes climbs the steps to the podium.

"Good afternoon," the priest says. "We are gathered here today to celebrate the life and mourn the pa.s.sing of Patrick Michael Murphy."

I don't remember much of Ty's funeral. What struck me about the funeral was that it ultimately felt like some kind of trial. Ty had committed a crime-premeditated murder, if you want to be technical-and we were all a.s.sembled there, his family and friends, his teachers and fellow students, as witnesses to testify to his good character.

Everyone who got up to speak said an approximation of the same thing: Ty was kind-we never heard him say a cruel word to anyone.

He worked hard in his cla.s.ses, even if he wasn't the best student.

He had some killer basketball moves, even if he wasn't very tall.

He was a good dancer.

He was sensitive. He felt things deeply. "Maybe too deeply," the pastor said, as if that explained everything.

Ty was good. Implication: He didn't deserve to be punished for his crime. He wasn't in his right mind. He wasn't thinking clearly. He didn't mean it.

Please, G.o.d, please, have mercy on his soul.

To which G.o.d responded: Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then everyone was allowed to feel better about it.

When Mom got up to speak, she said she was grateful for the sixteen years she got to spend with Ty, wonderful years, she said. She thanked people: his piano teacher, his Boy Scout leader, his basketball coach, his favorite French teacher, etc., for making those years so wonderful. Her voice quavered, but she didn't cry.

I was thinking that they had forgotten to mention that Ty was funny. I was remembering two years ago, around Christmastime. I teased him; I said Santa was going to bring him a stocking full of coal. I told him I hadn't decided yet if I was even going to get him a present.

I didn't mean it, of course. He knew I didn't mean it.

But then he said, and this I will never forget: "Well. I'm getting you a present."

"You are?"

"Yep," he said. "Just as soon as I can train the dog to p.o.o.p into a box."

He was funny. Mom was up there talking about how kindhearted he was, and I was in the front row staring at my shoes, trying not to laugh at a joke he'd told two years ago and trying not to cry at the fact that I would never hear him tell another joke.

Dad didn't speak at Ty's funeral. He sat two rows behind us with Megan. He stayed out of the way.

I didn't speak, either. Mom asked me to, but I was afraid that if I got up in front of everybody I would tell them about the promise I had made to Ty, that I would be there for him when he needed me, when he called. The promise I had broken.

Then it would have been me on trial.

Maybe I deserved that, but I couldn't face it.

At the end of Ty's funeral they played Elvis's version of "Take My Hand, Precious Lord." My mother's favorite church song.

Ty would have freaked. Elvis at his funeral.

But it didn't matter. Ty was dead. Mom was alive. In so many ways (the peach roses, the deep mahogany casket that matched our dining room table, the music, the scriptures, the food) she'd planned his funeral to be her own.

AFTER PATRICK'S FUNERAL we drive to Wyuka Cemetery for the graveside part. It's sleeting, a miserable combination of rain and slush, and we stand under black umbrellas around the grave. His father and sister cry brokenheartedly when the men lower the coffin into the ground.

Mom cries, too.

I don't.

I didn't then, either. I was all cried out by the time we got to the cemetery.

The priest says a few final words, and then we move like a herd of sheep into a room inside the funeral home for the wake. Mom brings along the green bean ca.s.serole to be heated and served.