My grandfather died with my hand wrapped around his while the rest of my family stayed away—then, with his final breath, he whispered, “After I’m gone, look behind the family portrait.”

Chapter 2

They did grief beautifully.

That was the first thing I noticed at the funeral, and I’m ashamed to say it took me most of the service to stop noticing it. My father stood at the graveside in a black suit that had been tailored for a different occasion, his chin at the practiced angle of a man who had watched himself mourn in mirrors. My mother wept into a handkerchief with such precise, photogenic timing that two strangers actually came up to her afterward to say how sorry they were.

And Sophie discovered that crying, done properly, was a kind of currency.

I watched her from across the lawn. She would press her fist to her mouth, and an older relative would enfold her, and the moment that person’s back was turned, Sophie would glance down at her phone, thumb-typing, already somewhere else.