She felt a pang of guilt. Jess was a barely-working musician. Here she was, feeling sorry for herself for being a fish out of water in St. Barts, but she was a detective with a salary, benefits, overtime, and a pension waiting for her down the road. Jess had to keep his cell phone on max volume next to his pillow in case some dive bar needed an over-the-hill punk band on short notice.

Sorry, she typed. I had a dream about Dad.

No dots. No response. Jess never wanted to talk about Dad or Wichita or anything else that brought up old feelings. But he was her only person when it came to this particular subject.

Finally the dots reappeared. His reply was brief.

What about him?

Some kids, they remember their parents pushing them on swings or coaching their teams or hugging them at graduation. But Jess would know those weren’t the kinds of dreams Ellie would have about their father. When she thought about her dad, it was almost always about either his death or the deaths that obsessed him while he was still alive.

When we went to the hospital, she typed.

More dots. Yeah, that sucked.

You were right, you know. About the hospital. You knew before anyone.

She pictured her brother fully awake now, in bed at the Murray Hill rent-controlled one-bedroom that had been hers before she moved in with Max. Maybe he was alone. Maybe not. Jess was Jess.

I don’t think they give trophies for that particular skill. Long pause. Seriously, R U OK?

She stared at her screen as she listened to the fan click. She adjusted the blankets again. One leg under, one leg out.

I don’t know.

Jess’s response took so long that she wondered if he had decided to go back to sleep. Dad killed himself, but we’re over that, remember? Get your groove on at that fancy island.

She shut her eyes, rolled over on her side, and tried to find a spoon position beside Max before another message popped up again.

Do you need me to call you?

She typed no and regretted it as soon as she hit send.

She sifted through the events of the day, wondering what had led her subconscious into the past. Then she heard her brother’s voice in her head, speaking the words he had just texted: Dad killed himself. They had finally learned the truth about her father’s death almost four years before, when the Wichita Police arrested the man she had always assumed was her father’s killer. We’re over that, remember?

She turned off her phone and laid it next to the lamp on the nightstand.

By the time Ellie fell asleep, the five-bedroom, four-bath house in Sagaponack, on the south side of Montauk Highway, listed for not quite $3 million, was spotless and staged, ready for the next day’s open house.