By the time the soda stopped dripping from my daughter’s hair, the school had already made its choice: Chloe Vance was a mistake to protect, and Lily Mercer was a mess to clean up.

That night, Lily couldn't sleep.

I heard her room door click open at 2:00 AM. I was sitting in the living room in the dark, my wife’s old acoustic guitar resting in my lap. I didn't play it—I hadn't played it since Hannah died—but sometimes just holding the wood made me feel like she was in the room, waiting for me to finish a song.

Lily walked in, her footsteps silent on the worn rug. She sat down on the other end of the old green sofa, pulling her knees up to her chest. She was wearing her mother’s Levi’s jacket over her pajamas.

"I miss her, Dad," she whispered.

"I know, baby," I said, setting the guitar down carefully on the stand. "Me too. Every second."

"Do you think she’d be mad at me?"

"For what?"

"For getting wet," Lily said, her voice cracking. "For not fighting back. For letting Chloe ruin the jacket."

I reached out and pulled her closer, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. She leaned her head against my chest, and I could feel her shaking.

"Your mother would have been proud of you," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "She didn't make that jacket so you could fight people with it, Lily. She made it because she wanted you to have something warm when the world gets cold. You didn't let Chloe ruin anything. You kept your dignity. You walked out of that room with your head up. That’s exactly what Hannah would have done."

"I felt her, Dad," Lily said quietly, her hand finding the daisy under her collar. "When the soda was dripping down my face and everyone was laughing, I closed my eyes and I remembered her sewing this. I remembered her saying 'Now it’s art.' I told myself that whatever they did to me, they couldn't touch that. They couldn't touch her."

I squeezed her tight, my tears finally slipping past my defenses, wet and warm against her hair.

"They can't," I said. "And they never will."

We sat there in the dark for a long time, watching the rain tap against the windowpane. For ninety-two days, we had been living like ghosts in our own house, moving around each other’s grief like it was a piece of broken glass on the floor. But tonight, the glass felt smaller. It still cut, but we were holding onto each other, and that was enough to keep us from bleeding out.

"Tomorrow is going to be different, Lily," I told her as she finally stood up to go back to bed. "The people who hurt you are going to have to explain themselves to the whole town. You don't have to watch if you don't want to."