“Well, why don’t you sell it? What good is it doing you?”

She shrugged. She clearly didn’t need the money. In her will she gave the bulk of it away to charities and an equal share to their parents and every one of her siblings. She’d made the will years ago, before her nephew had been born, and hadn’t updated it. Even the small slice Melanie received was enough to retire on.

Melanie had returned home, not realizing it would be the last time she saw her sister in person. It was such an ordinary interaction. Sure, she’d noticed that Cassidy was slow to answer emails and phone calls. Her voice was subdued when they talked and sometimes she seemed tired. But other times, she sounded completely fine.

It breaks Melanie’s heart now to think that she was hurting. That she only saw the strong, pleasant side of her sister that she would paint on for the few days they were together.

Melanie remembers that a couple of days before she passed, Cassidy called unexpectedly. Her voice was calm and detached. “Penny died,” she’d murmured, and Melanie expressed her sympathies. She was quiet for so long that Melanie thought the line had been disconnected, but then her voice came again. “Mel? Do you think I’m a good person?”

“Of course I do,” Melanie answered, not sure why the question had been asked. Cassidy didn’t bring it up again and her younger sister let it slide from her thoughts.

But when her father called her, his voice breaking, Melanie knew immediately what had happened. Although she hadn’t recognized the signs before, they all stacked up now. She beat herself up over her obtuseness. She should have checked on her more often. She should have done more, been there more.

She had gone to L.A. with their parents after the suicide, to identify Cassidy as well as help the police with any questions. Melanie had walked up the driveway of the gated mansion with a uniformed escort and peeked inside. She’d never been there before, but there was one thing that she knew was out of place: the MVA statuette, sitting on the coffee table.

Melanie still didn’t know what it meant.

Blink, and Cassidy was gone. All those years. Her multiplatinum records, her dozens of televised appearances, her outfits on display at the Smithsonian—none of that mattered; they were done fifteen years ago. But the delicate tap when she dented a sugar cookie dough ball with one finger, the delight she had when scratching a dog under the chin, the way she made people feel when they were around her—that had disappeared. Evaporated like ether.

“She was vivacious and amazing, and she will be missed,” Melanie concludes. “I wish I had known what Cassidy was going through. We love her and her memory will live on with us. Thank you.”

She returns to her seat, swiping away tears.

And that’s why Melanie unlocked her sister’s social media. She wanted people to know that the real Cassidy—the woman who had been such an integral part of Gloss—was not a taciturn introvert in the years following her rift with the rest of the group. It’s just, her mind fought against her. Had it been another day, if she hadn’t felt a certain despair already, if Penny hadn’t died of old age, if she’d read a different book, if she’d heard a different song on the radio, would she have reconsidered her plan?

Would she still be here now?

THE FAMILY FILED away from the service, the beige building reflecting too cheerily bright in the afternoon light; the camera people kept an almost-respectful lawn’s-distance away from the procession.

As the group, from one somber car to the next, wound its way to the cemetery, garish updates were already being made to cable network Twitter accounts and websites: Cassidy Holmes’s final resting place, Cassidy Holmes’s thirty-nine car procession, Cassidy Holmes’s hearse stopped traffic on Main for forty solemn minutes. Blurry, grainy images of the black car were posted as well, not remarkable at all except for the contents inside.

Houston’s channel 26 followed the car in a traffic helicopter, out of deference, perhaps, to their station’s affiliation with Big Disc. Having brought Cassidy Holmes into people’s televisions for the first time on Sing It, America! some fifteen-odd years ago, they thought it would be fitting to show her last journey across town before being set into the ground.

At the cemetery, passengers spilled out of their dark cars. Yumi could see a light smattering of paparazzi from the corner of her eye; it was a well-honed instinct of being able to recognize a telephoto just from the glinting reflection off the spherical lens. She ignored them as best she could, gripping her own arms so tight that she unknowingly drew a crescent-shaped slick of blood from digging in with an overgrown fingernail.

Meredith stood next to her as the priest made his comments and invited family to toss rose petals. She watched impassively as Mr. Holmes, his face slack with grief, brushed a handful of petals onto the gravestone, and held Soleil closer to her body.

A simple black hat with a half-veil shadowed Rose’s eyes. She was away from the other two women, on the opposite side of the mound of earth excavated for the fallen Cassidy. Her hands were clasped in front of her body, her cell phone tucked inward toward her palm.

If the photographers outside of the cemetery gates could magnify Rose’s face with their telephoto lenses, they might have seen a slight flickering of one cheek.

It could have been a smile.

It could have been her weeping.