Becca sat running her hand back and forth in the pool water, completely unaware of the dampness seeping through her skirt from the hard gray stone.  She hadn’t felt much of anything since Sunday night.  It was as if she had been given some sort of anesthetic and she couldn’t completely wake up from the numbing drug.
         The funeral that afternoon had been a blur.  She could remember standing in the funeral home and then standing in the cemetery, but nothing about how she had arrived there or who had been with her.  She had only a snapshot photo memory of the afternoon, as well as the past few days.  It was just in these last two hours that she was beginning to wake up to reality, with painful clarity.
         The Sommerfields had tried to be gentle with Becca. However, there was no getting around the fact that the details of the Deans’ will needed to be ironed out.  As specified, the entirety of the Deans’ estate was to be placed in a trust fund until the surviving children, in this case only Becca, reached the age of twenty-one.  Guardianship of Becca, along with the stewardship of the trust had been given jointly to Matthew and Jenna Sommerfield.  The appropriate modest signs of outrage had been expressed by family members, but no real indication that any relative actually wanted the responsibility of raising a teenage girl.
         In fact, Jenna had been quite amazed at how little concern and distress any member of the Deans’ relatives had expressed in person or in their absence of the funeral.   Anne’s sister and her family had flown in from Chicago, and Michael’s sister had flown in from Miami.  Anne’s parents had both passed away when the girls were quite young, while Michael’s divorced parents had so little interest in their son’s affairs that they only acknowledged his passing with a small bouquet of flowers sent to his sole surviving daughter.  The card in the bouquet appeared to have been signed by the florist, and displayed just three simple words, ‘Our deepest regrets’, scrawled across the bottom.  Anne and Michael’s respective sisters managed to express very little more in person, than that of the florist.
         It was during the reading of the will that everything began to come into focus for Rebecca.  She would be moving into the Sommerfield house, while the home she had lived in her entire life, and everything in it would be sold.  Jenna had explained, that of course if there were any items that held a particular amount of sentimental value to Becca, that she could remove them from the auction materials and have them placed in storage until the day she had a place of her own.  Becca had immediately conjured up the absurd image of the entire house being packaged up in yellow tape with the words ‘In Storage for Rebecca Dean’ written all over it.  Irrational as it seemed, the thought was a true reflection of how she felt.  How could she get rid of any of it.  The house was her world, and the only thing left that tied her to her family.  Suddenly, she had to make decisions about what would remain of their lives together and what would be sold off to strangers.  A slamming reminder that they would never be a family again.  Not in this house, not anywhere.
         Why Beth?  "It should have been me," she thought.  "Mom and Dad never did anything to hurt anyone, and Beth....... she was so talented... so unselfish...... she had so much to give."
Finally giving in to pain and confusion, Becca laid her body in a flat line along the pool’s edge as the first tears began to trickle from the corners of her eyes.
        "Why am I the only one left?"
        The tears became racking sobs.
        "I can’t do this…..I can’t be the one to live…..why did You leave me here?"
        Rolling away from the pool she curled herself into a tight ball. Becca hugged her knees to her chest as if that would stop the feeling that everything inside her was savagely being ripped out.  Her head began to ache as unanswered questions played like a scratched record and the weight of an empty world suffocated her sobs.  Her only escape fell on her as the sky darkened into night and sleep pulled her into silence.
        That was how Colin found her.  Asleep and curled up by the edge of the pool.

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