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the bedroom floor. Somehow they knew to get along today. They didn’t notice her, so she left them alone and started for the stairs.
    She found Alex downstairs, sitting on the sofa in the living room, bent over with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. He was staring at the big window, but he wasn’t looking at the view of the ocean. He wasn’t even there, not mentally.
    Trey was nowhere to be seen. Must be nice to be numb all the time. She was drowning in emotion and felt pulled away from the kids and Alex, and certainly Trey. How could she help any of them while falling apart herself?
    They had an hour till the funeral. She poured another cup of coffee, stared at the breakfast dishes, and thought about all the things they’d need to do later today and this week. Well, at least a list was something she could manage.
     
    ~  ~ ~
     
    “Ricky loved to laugh, and he would want us to remember him that way.”
    This could have been any Saturday on the calendar, but this one would stick in Trey’s mind for a very long time. The rain still hadn’t come, as if the sky were holding its breath along with him. What they were waiting for, he wasn’t sure. There wasn’t going to be a phone call announcing that it was all a mistake, that Ricky was alive and well.
    Trey and Rosette sat on the padded church pew with Candice and Jake between them. Alex sat on Trey’s other side, looking down. They surrounded Amanda along with her close friends. Summer, Amanda’s sister, sat rigidly on her right side. The two looked so much alike with their golden hair and sweet faces. They didn’t both inherit the same sweet personality, however. Summer might as well have been named Trouble.
    Not that Trey’s life was perfect, not by a long shot, and he hated passing judgment on people. He might not be a hell raiser, but he was on the brink of letting everyone down. Maybe he already had. As far as he knew, no one else was aware of their marriage problems and especially not the recent divorce development. That almost didn’t matter today.
    He looked at his pregnant sister-in-law, dressed in black over her swollen belly, and once again wondered how life could be so cruel. What would Amanda do now?
    And Ricky. What would they do without Ricky?
    He and Ricky had always been rivals. Trey was the firstborn, Jonathan Trevor Sinclair the third, so his little brother had always felt second best. It wasn’t the truth. Sometimes Trey felt like he had to be upstanding and responsible while Ricky got to be fun. Ricky was contagious—people inherently liked him. Trey and Ricky were teenagers when their parents had had a surprise third baby. Their brother Alex was almost like a nephew to them. Life was good until their mom died. Later they lost their dad too.
    He’d give anything to have his parents here with them. On the other hand, it’d break both his parents’ hearts to lose Ricky and to hear how Trey’s life was turning out. Maybe it was a blessing that Mom and Dad weren’t here for this.
    Trey had joined the Navy because he wanted something different. Now he couldn’t say what that was, but he’d wanted to go off somewhere. His grandfather and father both had been in the Coast Guard, and everyone was proud of that tradition. Then, Ricky had followed Trey’s lead of doing something else and joined the Marines. He could still hear his mother telling them, “But the Coast Guard doesn’t go off to war! They serve here at home, keeping people safe.”
    Now Ricky was dead, and Trey’s life was a mess.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    How do you say goodbye? They sat together in the long pew, dressed in black, listening to people talk about Ricky, but Rosette didn’t think this would give her any closure. It was so weird to think you wouldn’t see someone again. It almost didn’t feel real, until she heard Amanda crying.
    Oh, Ricky, she thought , you’ll never hold your newborn baby .
    She thought of Ricky’s laugh, his bright eyes, and