Vee’s door was ajar. I stepped toward it, heard movement, stopped. There was Vee in her windowless bedroom, facing away from me, taking off her dress. Behind her, the connecting door into her sister’s room was open. Light was streaming through the window at the far end. The sequins at the edges of the dress flashed in the low evening sun. Like fish scales.

Vee laid the dress out carefully on the bed. She reached to the top bunk, took an old Bauhaus T-shirt of mine, pulled it on.

I smiled, about to turn away.

I saw Vee kneel, reach out to the rear panel of the dress, run her fingers along it. She lifted it away from the front panel at the strap, held it in the flat of her hand. She crossed the floor to the door into her sister’s room. She walked toward the window, stood, silhouetted, dress in hand. Tiny specks of light on every wall.

I stepped forward, stood in the doorway of Vee’s room, watching. The area Vee was holding seemed duller than the rest, and when its sequins did glint it was not blue but orange-red.

“Vee! Cal!” Elsa’s voice from the kitchen.

I slipped out into the hall, stood watching through the hinge jamb as Vee returned to her own room. She folded the dress at the middle and slipped it down between her mattress and the wall.

“That dress today,” I said to Elsa, as we stood washing dishes at the sink.

“I know,” she said. “Something really not right there.”

“I saw her hide it down the side of her bed. I mean, it feels wrong to breach her privacy . . .”

“We need to know,” she said. “Absolutely we do.”

“So what do we do?”

“Vee!” she shouted. “Honey! Can you go fetch the ice cream from the freezer?”

Vee sauntered in. “Dan’s smoking cigarettes on the patio. What do you want to do about that?”

“Nothing.”

Vee rolled her eyes. “Hmm.” She opened the fridge, made a play of opening the icebox.

“The freezer downstairs,” said Elsa. “In the storage room.”

“Why can’t Dad?”

“Your father and I are talking.”

Vee rolled her eyes again. But she took the key Elsa handed her and headed out of the door.

I found the dress at once, between Vee’s bed and the wall.

Elsa was waiting in the kitchen. I held the dress by the straps, let it unroll. The sequins sent tiny shards of light onto every surface. Elsa took the dress from me, turned it around. A brown stain in the rear panel below the right shoulder.

I said, “She brought something home with her from the island.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I wish I had now.”

I heard the door of the apartment swing open, heard Vee kick off her shoes in the hall, heard the door slam shut.

“We agree it’s a bloodstain?” said Elsa.