As he picked up the bottle and finished off the last several drinks, Eileen stared out at the ocean and tried to imagine her sister standing before her. The waves rocking her slender frame, the silky pale-blue dress from her premiere that night clinging to her skin, the 9mm in her hand.

“There wasn’t very much blood.” Simon said, finally able to continue. “The gun was found in the water by the forensic search-and-recovery divers partially buried twenty feet from the shore. Plus, there would have been more blood in the sand if she’d shot herself on the beach…or so they told me.”

“I’m sorry, truly, Simon, for making you talk about this…but I have to know. Was it…did she…?”

“Through her heart,” he said, already knowing exactly what it was Eileen couldn’t bring herself to ask him. “She shot herself in the chest, through her heart. They promised me…they didn’t think she would have suffered very long. They thought it would have ended quickly.”

Eileen stared into her brother-in-law’s eyes, her fingers covering her lips, her mind working through the images it conjured of her beautiful and talented older sister, standing in the waves before them, squaring the gun between her breasts with both hands, and pulling the trigger on her own seemingly perfect life.

“Why?” she asked Simon. “Why would she do it? Do you know? Or have any idea? I go over it and over it, but I just can’t make any sense as to why she would do it.”

Simon pulled the beach towel tighter across his back. His arms resting on his knees propped up in front of him, he let his head hang between his shoulders. “Maybe…” he said so low Eileen could barely hear him. “I don’t know…but maybe.”

Eileen dug her toes into the smooth sand, cracking the surface while she waited several seconds for him to go on, but when he didn’t she prodded. “Well, what? Why? What are you thinking?”