She rested her hand on the cover, blotting out the center. Simon would have read this book many, many times already—long before it was ever published. Was he, like Eileen had done earlier, simply trying to hang on to one of the last tangible pieces of herself that Clare had left behind?

“Why would she do it?” Simon’s voice suddenly broke the silence. “I can’t understand it.”

Eileen turned to face him with no answers to help.

“I didn’t even know she owned a gun,” he whispered to her like a confession. “How could I not know that?”

Eileen’s heart beat hard against her chest, and a sickening realization took shape in her head.

“A gun,” Simon mumbled to himself, trying to configure the Clare as he knew her with this secret weapon that he hadn’t even known was in their house.

“Our mother gave it to her,” she said. “She gave us each one, when we moved out. To protect ourselves.”

Simon stared at the floor in front of him for a long time; it was impossible to guess what he was thinking. “I’m so sorry, Simon.”

He nodded in a series of quick up-and-down movements that looked more like a mild seizure than agreement. He placed his hand over his mouth, rubbed his lips and chin, then started shaking his head with the same spastic force, as if trying to counter his earlier thinking. “For her protection?” he asked, his voice breaking on the last word.

“It was over twenty years ago,” Eileen tried to explain, as if somehow the age of the gun, or their mother’s good intentions, could help Simon understand the destruction of his life today. She regretted the words. “Our mother…” What? What pearl of wisdom about their mom could possibly make any of this better? “She was a Wyoming cop, Simon.”

His lips flattened into an angry line. He needed someone to blame, and he couldn’t possibly blame Clare right now. Eileen braced herself for some displaced fury, prepared herself to not defend the twenty-year-old actions and intentions of a mother who had loved both her and her sister fiercely—but she didn’t have to.

Simon took a breath and stood up. “I’m not in a good place,” he said as he grabbed A Perfect Life from the desk where Eileen had placed it and walked to the door. With his hand on the handle, he stopped before leaving. “Can you find your room?”

“Yes, I think so.”

He nodded once and started to leave again before stopping himself. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m sorry,” he finished and left.