“No, but Clare was complex, often hard to understand. It occurs to me that we both knew things about my sister, maybe very different things. We should talk about her, together, and see if there is some way to make sense of all this.”

They climbed several more steps in silence, the exertion making Eileen’s heart pound uncomfortably in her chest.

“Who is Lauren Andrews?” Simon suddenly asked.

Eileen’s shoulders sagged, but she managed to keep marching up the seemingly endless stairs. “She’s nothing to do with Clare, but maybe that’s something else we can talk about.” For several more steps, she considered exposing that very hurtful and embarrassing information to her brother-in-law. “In fact, I think I might really need to.”

Back inside the house, Simon went to his room first and changed into dry clothes before he met her in Clare’s study. Eileen watched Simon stand near the door and take in Clare’s presence, her style, her things, her work, her memories. “It hurts to even be in here,” he said before moving closer and joining Eileen on the couch.

She opened the other bottle of wine, her mother’s birth year, and filled both glasses she’d grabbed from the kitchen on her way. Simon noticed the open journal she had been reading earlier and raised his eyebrows.

Eileen took a sip from her glass and explained her reasoning for not feeling guilty. “If my sister is going to take her life with zero explanation, then I figure that gives me the right to search for one.”

Simon turned to the first page and read a few lines before looking up at Eileen. “It feels wrong. Like a violation of her trust.”

“I felt that too, at first. You’ll get over it. Look, she spent her whole life filling those books. There has to be an answer in there…somewhere.”

“You’ve read more than this?” He held the slim volume up like evidence.

Eileen nodded.

Simon reached for his glass and took a drink. “So what do we do? Just go through all her things? All her work? All her private thoughts?” He sounded incredulous, like he expected her to confirm how wrong that would be.

“We could start there,” Eileen said, ignoring the uneasy expression on Simon’s face. “But first, maybe we could just talk about her, about the Clare each of us knew. Fill each other in?”

“She would lose her mind if she knew we were even in here without her. Going through her things.”

“Simon.” Eileen reached across the couch and placed her hand on his. “She’s gone. And maybe you don’t need this, but I do. And if the only way is by raking through every word she left behind, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”