Billy came down with his dishes, smiled shyly at the postmaster, then returned upstairs. They finished off the champagne and Tritia brought Howard and Doug each a beer. She drank ice water.

The conversation grew more somber and less frivolous as the meal progressed, and it was Howard who brought the subject up first. He was already well into his second beer. “I keep wondering why Bob did it,” the postmaster said, looking down at his plate, pushing the empty potato skin with his fork. “That’s the one thing that really gnaws at me, that I can’t understand: why he did it.” He looked up at Tritia, his eyes red but his voice even. “You knew Bob. He was an easygoing guy. He didn’t let things get to him. He wasn’t an unhappy man. He liked his job, loved his family, had a good life. And nothing changed. There was no big catastrophe, no death in the family, nothing that would push him over the edge. Besides, if something was bothering him, he would have told me.” His voice trembled slightly and he cleared his throat. “I was his best friend.”

Tritia put her hand on his. “I know you were,” she said softly.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, forcing himself not to give in to tears. “Ellen’s taking it really hard. I mean, harder than I thought she would. She always seemed like such a strong woman.” He smiled sadly. “Bob used to call her the Rock.” He absently fingered his napkin. “She was all drugged out when I went to see her the other day. The doctor’s giving her… I don’t know what all. He says it’s the only way to keep her calm. The boys are the ones who have to take care of everything, but you can see that the strain’s starting to show. They have questions just like I do, and there just aren’t any answers.”

“Are they still staying at the house?” Doug asked.

Howard nodded. “I told them to get out, at least for a while. It just stirs up bad memories, and I’m sure it’s not doing Ellen any good.”

Doug had a sudden picture of the two sons waking up each morning, each of them taking a shower in the same bathtub where their father had blown his brains out, getting their soap from the indented soap dish in which puddles of his blood and pieces of his fragmented scalp had lain. He wondered how Ellen bathed, how she avoided thinking about what she had seen.

“It’ll be all right,” Tritia told him.