When I found my voice, I asked where he got it.

“A jeweller,” he said. “Here.” He took my right hand and slid the ring onto the third finger. It was a little loose, but I didn’t care. Gabe had given me a small diamond solitaire before we were married. I loved it and never asked nor even thought about owning more jewellery beyond it and my wedding band. I detest the idea that jewellery and clothes and expensive shoes make a statement. I didn’t want to make any damn statement. I wanted to wear that ring, though.

“Gabe,” I said, “we have a problem.”

“What’s that?” He was sitting back with his arms resting along the top of the bench, watching the cormorants pass. It was early evening, the time of day when the black cormorants return from their journey to the lake, when they come home to the bay and nest on the north shore, across the water from the factories and the steel mills.

“We can’t afford it.”

“Yes, we can.”

“This ring is worth thousands.”

“Probably.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“It didn’t take much.”

I closed my eyes. “Was it stolen?”

I felt Gabe’s hand grip my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw him watching me with an expression I had not seen before, one that made me think either he had not considered that possibility or he had not prepared an answer. “No, Josie,” he said. “It is not stolen. I gave it to you because you are a beautiful woman. That’s why a man gives jewellery to a woman. Because she is beautiful and because he loves her.”

I EXPECTED MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RING from Tina when I came downstairs, but Tina, as she often does, surprised me by not mentioning it. “Did you make the funeral arrangements yet?” she asked.

I sat at the table. Funeral arrangements? That’s what you do for dead people, isn’t it. “No,” I said. “I’m still getting used to things.”

“We’ll need to find out when the body will be released. Where’s your computer?”

I told her I didn’t have a computer.

Tina looked at me as though I didn’t have a nose. “Don’t you know about the Internet?” she said. “Don’t you use email?”

I explained that yes, damn it, I knew about the Internet and email, and we even had a toilet and running water in the house, if she cared to notice, and that Gabe used a computer at his office and I used one at the retirement home to keep the books and at the library whenever I wanted to look up the name of the last king of Albania, but we didn’t own one because … well, because Gabe and I liked the idea of being contrary, I guess.

Tina shrugged and began opening cupboards. “Have you got a pad and pencil somewhere?”

“I think so.” I held my head in my hands. No, we didn’t. Not anymore. Not one I could find. Gabe would know where the pad was, the one we used to write things down. Shopping lists. Telephone numbers. Notes to each other.

“Where is it?”

“Don’t know.”

“I have one upstairs.” Of course Tina would travel with a notepad in her luggage. Tina is always prepared. When she returned, we began making a list of things to do. My life was getting organized.

TINA DROVE OUR HONDA TO VISIT MOTHER, crossing the lift bridge and skirting the water’s edge to Mother’s retirement home, where she and Mother greeted each other like two soldiers from an old war who had nothing in common beyond their regimental badges, and staff members came to tell me how sorry they were to hear about Gabe. When I approached her chair, Mother clung to me and we both cried over Gabe.

“MOTHER LOOKS GOOD,” Tina said when we left. “I feel like pasta. Where’s a good place for pasta?”

“Italy.”

“I didn’t realize new widows overflowed with humour.”

“It’s not humour, it’s irony. Tina, this is WASP country. They only know two spices here: salt and pepper. Pepper is the exotic one.”

“Every town has at least one good Italian restaurant.”

“Yes, and a war memorial and a whore.”

She found a strip-mall Italian bistro with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths on small tables and a waitress who, together with the restaurant decor, made me think we had encountered two out of three of every town’s traditional attractions. After she ordered for both of us—spaghetti bolognese for me, veal parmigiana for her—Tina leaned across the table wearing her listen-to-your-older-sister expression. “Sweetheart,” she said, “I want you to consider something.” When I did not respond, she said, “I want you to consider moving to Vancouver when it’s over.”

“When what’s over? My life?”

“This. Do you want to keep living where you are? Breathing smoke and dust from the damn steel companies? Living under a couple of expressway bridges, tracking sand into your house every day?” She sat up again. “Do you know that one of your neighbours keeps a helicopter on his porch and a swamp buggy in his driveway? We passed it on the way in.”

“I’ll bet you don’t see that in Kitsilano.”

“I’m not suggesting you live in Kitsilano. I mean, you can if you want.” She meant I could if I could afford it. “It would just be nice to have you nearby, downtown or Burnaby or somewhere. What’s wrong with wanting to have your sister live near you?”

“Mother too?”

I had caught her off guard. It had taken her twenty minutes to forget about Mother. Her jaw tightened. “Mother could have another stroke, a major stroke, any day.”

“Then better she has it here, with me near her. When Mother goes, I’ll consider coming to Vancouver. How’s that?” I had no intention of moving to British Columbia.

Tina thought about that. Then, “How long had Gabe been depressed?”

“He wasn’t depressed.”

“It tends to be depressed people who commit suicide.”

“Gabe did not commit suicide. He did not put his gun to his head and kill himself.”

“Isn’t that what the police are saying? Aren’t they saying it was a suicide?”

“They’re wrong. I know they’re wrong. Gabe never put his gun together unless he was going on duty—”

“What’s that mean, ‘put his gun together’?”

“You take your weapon apart …” I sounded like a police procedure manual. “… when you’re at home. You put the clip with the ammunition in one place, making sure there’s no bullet in the firing chamber, and put the other part somewhere else. So the gun’s never ready to fire, in case somebody finds it or …” I wasn’t sure of the other reason for making a gun unable to fire. I just felt better about it. “Everybody puts their weapon in kitchen drawers. It’s a cop thing, around here at least. You put the weapon in the kitchen drawer and the ammunition clip beside the cereal boxes, or some other place. Cops joke about it. Cops joke about everything. Don’t reach for the cornflakes and come up with the Glock. Gabe would not put his gun together and carry it out to the blanket when he knew I was on my way to meet him.”

“Unless he planned to use it.”

“I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.”

“What’s a Glock?”

“His gun. I don’t know what happened to Smith & Wesson. One made cough drops and the other made cooking oil.” It was Gabe’s joke. Most people don’t get it. Tina was most people, so she thought it over before reaching across the table and putting her hand on mine.

“Okay, I understand,” she said. “About the gun.” The waitress arrived with two glasses of Chianti and a basket of bread sticks. “What’s with all that yellow tape wrapped around your tool shed?” Tina asked when she left. “Wasn’t Gabe found on the beach?”

“Some pervert’s been in there playing with himself,” I said. “That’s what Mel thinks.”

“Mel? Who’s Mel?”

“A cop who used to work with Gabe.”

“What’s he like?”

I shrugged. “A nice guy.” I had to say something.

I looked up to see Tina staring at me with one eyebrow raised. The waitress brought our food, and when she left I expected Tina to say aloud what I had just read in her expression, but we ate in silence until Tina began reminiscing about Dad and various aunts and uncles. I ate barely half of my pasta. Tina devoured her meal, then flashed her American Express card, and we drove back to the beach strip in silence.