Full part: At my daughter’s funeral, my son-in-law pointed at his daughters and announced, “They’re going into foster care. I deserve a fresh start with

He said them loudly, in the middle of the cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, while the earth covering Rose’s grave was still fresh and the scent of white lilies lingered in the damp afternoon air. My daughter had been buried less than an hour earlier. She was only thirty-five years old. And before the mourners had even begun to leave, Arthur was already talking about getting rid of their three daughters as though they were nothing more than an inconvenience standing between him and his new life.

Something inside my chest broke. Beside me stood my granddaughters:

Twelve-year-old Lucy clutched her mother’s framed photograph so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Nine-year-old Rachel stared silently at the freshly covered grave, her face completely empty.