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was the first thing we did together, you know, play tennis.”
    “Yes,” Sam said again, “I know. Remember I smiled when you said, ‘I let him win.’”
    Robin was in a reflective mood that afternoon as the storm moved closer. She took Sam’s attention from the foothills, which were gone now, covered by brooding clouds, when she spoke. “Now when I go into a restaurant and see a couple sharing a pizza and he’s holding her hand over the table, I want that to be us so badly that my heart aches to the point that it hurts to breathe.”
    Robin stared off into the distance, unseeing. It seemed as though she had gone somewhere deep inside herself where Sam could not follow. She could do nothing except wait for her sister to return.
    “I remember sometimes we’d be driving somewhere and he’d have one hand on the wheel, and the other was in my lap, doing things he shouldn’t have been doing,” Robin said and arched her right eyebrow at Sam as if to say ‘know what I mean?’
    “It’s funny what stays with you over time,” Sam said and took a long drag on her cigarette, then flicked the butt over the balcony.
    The approaching storm had cast the city in a premature twilight. A long, jagged streak of lightning left the sky and struck something far off in the distance. The loud crack of thunder that quickly followed made the sisters jump.
    “I love a good storm,” Robin said.
    “Me, too,” Sam said. “There’s something mesmerizing about them.”
    Before long large dots of rain begin to cover the balcony railing, turning the light wood dark. For a long time neither spoke, caught up in their own thoughts.
    And then Robin said, “I remember watching them pull Brady up out of the water. I remember standing where I was and I may have been too shocked to move, Sammie, but I am certain of one thing.”
    Sam knew what that one thing was. Robin told Sam that day in the ER—she felt his pain and it had pierced her heart in a way nothing ever really had. “I realized then how much I really loved him and always would,” Robin said and her voice cracked a little. For a time she was silent.
    “Todd asked me out … again,” Robin said finally without giving Sam her eyes.
    “And what did you say this time?”
    Todd had fallen in love with Robin the moment he saw her. It was a relationship that never developed—Robin told Todd immediately that though she did have feelings for him, her heart and her love belonged to Brady and always would.
    “What could I say? You know I could never do that to Brady. The Brady I fell in love with is still in there. I see him sometimes, and that Brady knows, that Brady sees. I couldn’t do it to him. I know he would probably shrug or pretend it didn’t bother him, but deep down, I know it would destroy him to see me with somebody else. I’ll never be with another man, Sam. Never.”
    The storm marched in with an instant and ferocious beauty. It raged on for almost an hour, thunder, lightning, driving rain. It took hold of their attention and sent them into stillness and silence. The storm passed eventually, leaving a gentle rain. Something refreshing, something quiet, something soothing.
     
    Everyone’s concerns vanished when they saw the white Chevrolet Caprice roll slowly through the open cast-iron gates of the cemetery. The car looked official, with its drab hubcaps, extra antennas and high-powered spotlights mounted on each side of the car doors. Sam watched Brady Gilmore get out of the car and follow his father toward the graveside. He walked with his head bent slightly forward and looked as obedient as the child he had become. Wyatt Gilmore was the Grandview police chief and a retired Marine. He stood six feet and was a bear of a man. Nearing sixty, his physique was that of a man twenty years younger, burly with a broad back and thick chest. His belly had only just begun to protrude slightly over his belt buckle. Though he was retired military, a part of him would always be a