Blake shook his head.

“Do you always eat so…lightly in the evening?”

Again, he shook his head.

“Oh. So then this is a special occasion?”

He had no idea how to answer that, so he just took another spoonful of the atrocious soup. Surely there had to be some sort of nutritional value in it somewhere.

But then, much to his surprise, Penelope clapped her hand over her mouth, turned beet red, and said, “Oh, I'm so sorry!”

He set his spoon down slowly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Of course this is a special occasion. I had completely forgotten. I'm so sorry.”

“Penelope, what the devil are you talking about?”

“Marabelle.”

Blake felt an odd sort of clutching feeling in his chest. Why would Penelope bring up his dead fiancée now? “What about Marabelle?” he asked, his voice completely even.

She blinked. “Oh. Oh, then you don't remember. Never mind. Please forget I said anything.”

Blake watched his sister in disbelief as she attacked the bowl of soup as if it were manna from heaven. “For God's sake, Penelope, whatever it was you were thinking about, just say it.”

She bit her lip in indecision. “It's the eleventh of July, Blake.” Her voice was very soft and filled with pity.

He stared at her in one blessed moment of incomprehension until he remembered.

The eleventh of July.

The anniversary of Marabelle's death.

He stood so abruptly that his chair toppled over. “I will see you tomorrow,” he said, his voice clipped.

“Wait, Blake! Don't go!” She rose to her feet and hurried after him as he strode out of the room. “You shouldn't be alone right now.”

He stopped in his tracks but he didn't turn around to face her as he said, “You don't understand, Penelope. I will always be alone.”

Two hours later Blake was good and drunk. He knew it wouldn't make him feel any better, but he'd kept thinking that one more drink might make him feel less.

It didn't work, though.

How had he forgotten? Every year he'd marked her passing with a special token, something to honor her in death the way he had tried and failed to honor her in life. The first year it had been flowers on her grave. Banal, he knew, but his grief was still raw, and he was still young, and he hadn't known what else to do.

The following year he'd planted a tree in her honor at the place she'd been slain. It had somehow seemed fitting; as a young girl Marabelle had been able to climb a tree faster than any boy in the district.

Subsequent years had been marked with a donation to a home for foundlings, a gift of books to her old school, and an anonymous bank draft to her parents, who were always struggling to make ends meet.

But this year…nothing.

He stumbled down the path to the beach, using one arm for balance while the other clutched his bottle of whiskey. When he reached the end of the trail, he plopped inelegantly onto the ground. There was a grassy spot before the hard ground gave way to the delicate sand for which Bournemouth was famous. He sat there, staring out at the Channel, wondering what the hell he was meant to do with himself.