Diane Brandt
Written for readers who have finished Book 1.
Diane Brandt is Russell's wife and the keeper of the Brandt table: the Sunday candle, the pot roast and her own bread, the porch light lit in the afternoon so the door is already open. At Beacon she wears her bright Sunday face, and only Erin seems to notice the tiredness under it. She speaks about her son with a helpless fondness, as though he were a large friendly weather system she could not stop loving. She has also known for years that a crate of old radio recordings from her husband's side of the family was sitting somewhere, and that nobody ever played them. When it surfaces after the funeral, she pushes it across the kitchen table to Erin with one instruction: hear all of it, and don't stop at the part that sounds good.