Look what you robbed her of, Kate imagined saying to her dad. This was her life. It was hers, even if you were willing to throw it away. Where are you? Why aren’t you seeing this? Look at what you’ve done!

The rabbi said a few words after the prayers. When he was finished, Kate stepped up to the bimah. She looked out at the hushed, filled pews. Greg smiled, encouragingly. It took everything she had to be up there, but someone had to speak for her mother. She looked out at the tearful, familiar faces. Grandma Ruth. Aunt Abbie, Mom’s sister.

“I’m here to tell you some things about my mom,” Kate said. “Sharon Raab.”

It felt good to say it loudly. To proclaim it. Kate sucked back a rush of tears and smiled. “And I bet none of you ever knew how Mom loved to dance…”

She told them about West Side Story. And how Sharon loved to watch Everybody Loves Raymond reruns after the late-night news and sometimes had to sneak out to the den so it wouldn’t disturb her dad. And how, when she did her first successful solo yoga headstand, she screamed at the top of her lungs from the basement for everyone to come down and see. “And there was Mom, standing on her head, going, ‘See! See!’” The mourners laughed. “We all thought the house was on fire!”

Kate told them how much her mother had been there for her when Kate got sick, how she’d constructed charts and schedules to keep her on track with her insulin. And when their life suddenly changed, “this surreal, unimaginable shift of fortune,” she changed. She never lost her pride. “She held our family together. She was the only one who could do it. Thank you, Mom.”

Kate said, “I know you never thought you accomplished enough, but what you didn’t know was that just being there for us was enough. I’m really going to miss that smile and the twinkle in your eyes. But I know that all I’ll have to do is close my eyes and you’ll be right there by me-always. I’ll hear that sweet voice telling me you love me and that everything is going to work out for the best. It always does. I am so grateful to have had your presence in my life, Mom. You were a truly amazing person to have as a guide.”

At the end a single cellist played “Somewhere” from West Side Story. Kate, Justin, and Em followed Sharon ’s casket down the aisle. They stopped and wrapped their arms around people with tearstained faces. People she might never see again. At the door Kate turned. She had a moment of perfect peace. See, Mom, they know who you are.

Afterward the hearse led a procession of cars to the cemetery in Westchester, where they had a family plot. On foot they followed the casket up to a small knoll overlooking the cemetery gate. Under a canopy of spruces, there was a large hole in the ground. Sharon ’s father was buried there. His mother. There was an empty space alongside for Kate’s father. Only the family gathered around. Justin rested his head against his Aunt Abbie and started to sob. Suddenly it had hit him. Kate put her arm around Emily. The rabbi recited a final prayer.

They lowered their mother into the grave.

The rabbi handed out white lilacs. One by one, each of them stepped up and tossed a flower onto the casket. Grandma Ruth, who was eighty-eight. Aunt Abbie and her husband, Dave. Kate’s cousins, Matt and Jill, who came in from college. Everyone tossed a flower in, until the blooms became indistinguishable, a quilt of white.

Kate was the last. She and Greg stood silently over the casket. She squeezed his hand. Her eyes lifted for a second, and in the distance, out on the road, she spotted Phil Cavetti and two agents waiting down by the cars. Her blood grew tight.

I won’t give in, she promised. I’m going to find out who did this, Mom.

She tossed the final flower.

I’m going to find out what you wanted to tell me. I’m going to get these bastards. You can rest on that, Mom. I love you. I’ll never forget you for a second.

Good-bye.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Two weeks passed. Kate’s shoulder slowly healed. She wasn’t ready to go back to the lab. She was still too angry, the wounds inside too raw. It seemed only yesterday she had watched as her mother died in her arms.

Kate still had no idea if her father was dead or alive. Just that a new world had exploded in her face. A world she hated. It had been a year since her family had gone into hiding. Her mother was dead. Her father was missing. Every truth had been turned into a lie.

When she felt strong enough, Kate went up to Bellevue to check in on Tina.

Her friend was still in a deep coma, 9 to 10 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. She was being kept in a long-term trauma ward now. She was still connected to a respirator and receiving mannitol through an IV to relieve the brain swelling.

But there were moments of hope. Tina’s brain activity had increased, and there were signs of alertness in her pupils. Occasionally she would even stir. Still, the doctors said it was no more than a fifty-fifty chance that she’d recover or be the same person she was before the shooting. The left side of her brain had suffered damage, the area that controls speech and cognition. They just didn’t know.

There was one piece of good news, though. Tina’s killer had been found.

Amazingly, it turned out to be a gang killing after all. A random initiation rite, just as the police had said. No link to Kate’s situation whatsoever. They had the seventeen-year-old kid who did it in custody. A renegade gang member had turned him in. The evidence was ironclad. It could have been anyone on that street that night.

This took a ton of pressure off Kate’s mind.

Today she stayed with Tina in the cramped private room while Tom and Ellen went to lunch. The monitors emitted their steady, reassuring beeps, one IV for keeping the swelling down, another for nourishment and hydration. A thick breathing tube went through her mouth into her lungs. There were a few pictures taped to the walls and on the bed table, happy ones: family trips, Tina’s graduation. One of her and Kate on the beach at Fire Island. The respirator marked the time with a steady whoosh.

It still hurt deeply to see her like this. Tina looked so frail and pallid. Kate wrapped her hand around her friend’s curled, inert fist. She told her about what had happened, how she’d had to go away for a while, the narrow escape on the Harlem River, then Sharon.

“See, Teen, check it out. We both got shot. It’s just that…”

Her voice cracked, unable to finish the sentence. It’s just that my wound will heal.

“C’mon, Tina, I need you to get better. Please.”

Sitting next to her, listening to the monitors beep and the respirator contract and expand, Kate felt her mind rush back in time. What was it her mother needed to tell her? Now she’d never know. The picture…Kate was starting to feel that Cavetti might well be right. Maybe her father did kill that agent. Maybe he was alive. Her mother was gone. That answer had died with her. What was he doing in that photo? How deep was his connection to Mercado? How many years-?

Kate heard a soft groan. Suddenly she felt a tug on her finger. Her heart leaped up into her throat. She turned.

“Tina.”

Tina’s eyes were still shut, the monitors beeping steadily. The tube in her mouth didn’t move. It had only been one of those involuntary reflexes. Kate had seen them before. It gave them hope, falsely. Maybe she’d been squeezing Tina’s hand a bit too hard.

“C’mon, Teen…I know you can hear me. It’s me, Kate. I’m here. I miss you, Teen. I need you to recover. Please, Tina, I need you to come back to me.”

Nothing.

Kate let go of her friend’s hand.

How could she just put it away, Kate thought, the drive inside her? How could she just pretend that there wasn’t something horrible behind what had happened? Go on with her life. Let them win. Never know. It always came back to the same question, and now that question needed to be answered.