She doesn’t blink. “Why? You want to stir up the whole sordid story again? I mean, God, Mallory, it’s not like a medical examiner can match a bullet to a body. There’s no body.”

“That’s not the point!” I shout. The ocean air blows through my increasingly wet clothes, but it’s not cold that shakes me. It’s anger. “The point is, we might have learned something. He denied having a gun that night. If we’d been able to trace this one to a later manufacture date, we’d have known for sure that he was telling the truth. If he didn’t buy it, we might have been able to find out who did. Maybe it belonged to Elizabeth. Maybe Dad tried to take it away from her and it accidentally went off. Maybe she deliberately shot herself.”

“Maybe Anne bought the gun,” Margo says from my side. The poised Chicagoan is gone. Like the rest of us, she is soaked. Joy is beside her, and while I want her back at the house, out of the rain, and away from ugliness, it’s too late to shield her. To her credit, she knows to keep her mouth shut.

Not Anne, who cries, “Are you kidding? I would never buy a gun. I don’t want to touch a gun.”

“But you knew he had one,” Margo says.

“I did not.”

“You knew it was in the shed.”

“I did not! What is wrong with you?” She points a shaky finger up at the bluff. “Did you not see me back there? I didn’t even know there was a loose panel! You did, Margo—and if I hid a gun there, wouldn’t I have known about the earrings—earrings Mom meant for me—earrings that you stole?” Perhaps remembering them now and wanting to get them, she tries to dodge past us, but we are three blocking her one, all four of us bedraggled. And I’m not done.

“It was Dad then,” I say. “Dad hid the gun there.”

“Why does it matter? The gun is gone! He can’t use it. We’re safe. That’s one good thing about Margo being a thief—it led us to the gun—and anyway, Mallory, why should I listen to you? Put you to the test, and your true colors show. I always knew you were on her side.” Her gaze broadens. “If either of you cared for Dad, you’d know I did the best thing.”

“Just because the gun is gone doesn’t mean it didn’t exist,” Margo says.

“It didn’t,” Anne insists. “That gun had nothing to do with what happened to Elizabeth.”