“It doesn’t matter.” It was a mantra repeated a thousand times a day in her mind. A distant echo of their last conversation. She knew it didn’t, nothing does in the final equation. But there were the other echoes. The barely choked back words. The jagged, wet sound of water splashing. The abyss engulfing the only thing that ever felt meaningful in her life. What could she have done? Would it have made a difference? The moonlight wanders across the lake’s surface. It doesn’t matter. Does it?