A woman in her late-thirties speaks next. She lost her older sister, Stephanie, four years ago, but this is her first meeting. Her sister had struggled with eating disorders in the past, but had gotten treatment, and things seemed manageable, so she doesn’t think that was the reason. Anyway, she was a dancer, so it was normal for her to be thinner than the average person. She lived in Toronto, where there were more auditions, and she taught dance, but she was about to turn forty and the big break she had been hoping for hadn’t panned out. But she was happy, or at least seemed to be. She had a beautiful son, who was eight at the time, and a husband she adored. A good life. She came back to Ottawa for a week before she died, and while she seemed a little preoccupied, she was otherwise normal. They spent a lot of time together. She doted over her niece, who was only one at the time. They talked about meeting up in Toronto soon. The day after she got back home, her sister’s husband found her in the bathtub. In the note she had left behind, she said she had made a deal with herself: she would live until forty and if things didn’t get better by then, at least she would know she tried. The woman threw herself into motherhood as a way of coping with her grief. But now her daughter’s in school and she has more time on her hands and suddenly everything’s flooding back to her. She feels guilty for pushing it away like she did, not being there for her nephew and brother-in-law like she should have been, but she didn’t know how else to handle everything at the time. What kind of sister is she? How could she not know her own sister was in trouble? There might have been signs, she keeps wracking her brain, but she was too wrapped up in herself and baby to notice. It’s all so open-ended. Her sister was there, and now she isn’t, and she can’t make sense of any of it. What is she supposed to tell her daughter now that she’s older?

By the time everyone in the circle has spoken, two hours have passed. The thread that runs through the stories is more than suicide. It’s confusion, utter disbelief, even when there is a clear-cut reason for the loss of life, and devastatingly more so when there isn’t. They are a circle of people, stunned, staring at each other from left to right, wondering what in God’s name happened to their loved ones and their lives, how it could have happened, and always and forever, why?