Once we’re alone, I approach Anne. Crouching, I grab either side of her chair cushion. “I’m sorry, Annie—sorry for what I said about the gun. We were all upset and said things that were angry and unfair.”

She stares at me. Her hair is loose now, its waves tipped with the frizz we all know, but the burgundy streak that I’ve come to like seems more truculent than fun. I search her face for my little sister, but that little girl is grown.

So I speak to the woman she is now, who may be more sensitive than I give her credit for. “I’m sorry for what I said about you being naïve. Your optimism has always been one of the things I most love about you.”

Her eyes fill. “You think I killed him.”

I recoil. “Why would I think that?”

“Because I didn’t take him to the doctor when I knew how breathless he got. And I did know it. I’m not stupid. I didn’t take him to the doctor about the memory thing either, and if I’d done that, the doctor might have discovered the heart problem, and if he had, Dad might still be alive.”

Shifting my hands to her knees, I give them a little shake. “Would Dad have been happy with that?”

“No! He didn’t want any of it! But that isn’t why I didn’t take him to the doctor. I did it for me. I didn’t want to know he was sick. It was my fault, not his, mine.”

“No,” I insist, but she races on.

“He was my life here. Oh sure, I have the shop and friends, but Dad is this place. He built it, and he ruled it. You both have other homes.” Her gaze widens to include Margo, who has come close. “Not me. I’ve lived in this house my entire life, and I’ve lived with him that whole time.”

“Oh, Annie,” I breathe, seeing her loss in ways I don’t see my own. She’s the one whose daily life will be different. Of course, she would feel Tom’s death more intensely than either of us. “I’m sorry.”

“But I’m not sorry it’s been that way, don’t you see? We’ve been good here together, Dad and me. I understood him. I worked around his moods, and he loved me for that. The house has been filled with people, and now it’s empty. Everything has changed.”

“Not everything,” I say, thinking of all of us here now.

Margo adds, “Not Sunny Side Up. Not Bill—”

“—who wants to marry me,” Anne wails.

She sounds panicked, which I don’t understand. “But that’s great, Annie. You were afraid he wouldn’t.”