She would remember, later, the order in which things happened, and she would remember it the way you remember a car accident, with absolute clarity and no sense at all of how long anything took.
She showered in three minutes. She put on leggings and the softest sweatshirt she had and her hair was wet down her back. She got her silver flats out from under the bed and the sash out of her backpack, still folded in its tissue paper, and she came out into the kitchen and saw through the slider door that her father was in the backyard, and that he had the fire pit going.
The fire pit was the one good thing Dana had ever bought for the house, a big round steel bowl on legs that sat in the middle of the paver patio her father had laid himself the summer before her mother died. They'd made s'mores in it once, all five of them, the first fall, when everyone was still pretending. Her father had dragged it a few feet farther from the house. He had moved the patio chairs back against the fence and the cushions into the shed. The garden hose was uncoiled across the pavers with the nozzle in reach of his left hand, and the red fire extinguisher from his truck stood on the edge of the patio like a little soldier. There was no wind; the smoke went straight up. He had laid the fire the way he did everything, carefully, with kindling and split oak, and it was burning hard and clean.
Next to him, draped over the back of the last remaining patio chair, were two garment bags. One white. One black. Both said Bellagrace in gold script.
Brooke came and stood next to Junie at the slider. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh my God."
"Did he—"
"He went upstairs. Into their closet. He came down with them. He didn't say anything." Brooke grabbed Junie's arm. "Mom's gonna lose her mind."
As if she'd summoned it, they heard Dana's car turn into the driveway. They heard both doors. They heard Kenzie's voice, high and happy—"Michelle is literally a genius, I'm going to tip her so much"—and then the front door, and Dana calling, "Mark? Baby? Is that your truck?" in a voice so light and surprised and pleased that, for a single dizzying second, Junie almost believed it.
They came through the kitchen. Kenzie's hair was up in a tower of shining curls with tiny pearls pinned into it. Dana's was smooth and swept to one side. They both saw Junie and Brooke at the slider and then looked past them to the yard, and Junie watched Dana's face do something she had never seen it do before. It went blank. Completely blank. Like a screen when the power cuts.
Then Dana slid the door open and went out onto the patio, and they all followed her, because there was nothing else to do.
"Mark." Dana's voice was very calm. "What are you doing?"
"Hi, Dane." He didn't look at her. He was unzipping the white garment bag. The pink tulle came out of it like a cloud. In the late afternoon light it was beautiful, really beautiful, and Junie hated, in some small part of herself, that it was. "I came home early. Hollis let me go. I wanted to see the girls get ready for the dance."
"Mark, put that back. That's Kenzie's—Mark, that's not funny. That dress cost—"
"Six hundred and forty dollars," Mark said. "I know. I saw the receipt. I saw a lot of receipts on the way home. I had three and a half hours." He held the dress up by its straps. It hung from his fist, enormous and weightless. "This one came out of Rose for Junie on Wednesday. Along with yours. The navy one. Four eighty-five."