Colleen Sherman's unresolved disappearance

Colleen Sherman's unresolved disappearance is the loss that first appears to end her life and then, through Colleen's return, overturns the future Willa Ashford had built around her presumed death. For years there is no body and no settled account of what happened at sea. The absence leaves room for suspicion, prolongs Willa's grief, and helps drive her away from the sport that had bound the two women together.

Identity and the bond with Willa

Colleen was Willa's best friend, beach-volleyball partner, and, after a family tragedy, closest remaining family. Willa had switched from indoor volleyball to the beach circuit ten years earlier; Colleen, already its veteran, taught her how to play. Their connection grew beyond the court into a relationship Willa understood as sister-like. Both had lost their parents when a small plane carrying them to an event in Croatia crashed into the Adriatic Sea. With neither woman having siblings, they became each other's only family.

That history makes Colleen's disappearance more than the loss of a teammate. Willa describes her parents' deaths as devastating but says Colleen's passing nearly broke her: Colleen had been the person she turned to when life became unbearable. The later absence therefore reopens an earlier bereavement, taking away Willa's remaining family just as the two had once faced the loss of their parents together.

The disappearance at sea

Colleen was an expert sailor. Her father had taught her when she was young, and she continued sailing; Willa believed she might even have made the Olympic sailing team had she not chosen volleyball. Colleen went out on her boat with her fiancé, Corey Baxter. Willa was unsure whether the vessel was a sloop or a ketch. A storm came in and the wind rose. Corey later said he woke with a severe headache and a baseball-sized knot on the back of his head, while Colleen was gone. He believed the boom had struck him and knocked him unconscious.

Authorities concluded that Colleen had also been hit and thrown overboard, then drowned after being knocked unconscious. The account depended in part on the assumption that the boom had incapacitated both people: Colleen was a skilled swimmer, but the authorities believed she could not survive the fall into the water. Corey said she was not wearing a life jacket. No trace of her body was ever found, leaving the central conclusion unconfirmed by physical evidence.

Search, suspicion, and missing evidence

The search lasted three days. Willa spent hours looking for her friend, but neither the search nor the authorities found any trace of Colleen. The absence of a body preserved a gap between the official explanation and what could actually be established: an accidental fall and drowning seemed possible, but Colleen's expertise and the lack of remains kept the case from feeling conclusive.

Suspicion also settled on Corey. He was with Colleen when she disappeared and remained a prime suspect, though authorities had no evidence establishing that he killed her. The available checks gave investigators a limited sequence rather than an answer. Marina video showed Corey and Colleen leaving together that morning; the boat's GPS placed it only as far as the location where Corey was found. After waking and realizing Colleen was gone, Corey called for help. The Coast Guard pinpointed his location, and although he refused to leave, rescuers took him to a hospital for treatment of a severe concussion.

Willa did not believe Corey had murdered Colleen. She regarded his distress as sincere and believed he had loved her. Vic Bello, however, told Colt Fontaine that Colleen's disappearance did not add up: she was an expert sailor who would have taken precautions, and her body had never been recovered. He considered murder a possibility. The difference between Vic's caution and Willa's trust keeps the uncertainty alive without turning suspicion into proof.

Grief, retirement, and renewed stakes

After Colleen's disappearance and presumed death, Willa had no desire to play volleyball again and could not imagine another partner. She hung up her bikini and vowed not to look back. Instead, she took an unpaid assistant coaching position at a high school, where she discovered that teaching the game suited her. The students absorbed her instruction eagerly, and she began considering permanent work, perhaps even a head-coaching position. Her exit from competition was real, but it did not sever her connection to volleyball.

That distinction becomes important when a group of executives, sponsors, and donors asks Willa to return for the tournament in Serenidad. It is the last opportunity for a United States team to earn a place in the next Olympic Games. Although the country has dominated the international scene, no American team has yet qualified, and the defending champions do not receive an automatic place. Twenty-four teams will compete at the Games: the host country qualifies automatically, while the other twenty-three places go to teams earning them through sanctioned events, rankings, and final qualifying tournaments. Willa ultimately agrees to compete after searching her own feelings and talking with Vic. She understands the return as carrying forward the legacy she shared with Colleen, not as replacing her friend.

The qualification rules separate earning a national place from selecting the pair who will represent the country. Willa and her temporary partner, Tabitha Hubbard, can help secure the United States' place without thereby claiming that place for themselves. At the three-day event, sixteen teams enter a format that gives some losing teams another route to the final; five matches separate Willa and Tabby from qualification. The tournament's national stakes echo Willa's private ones: her comeback is organized around the legacy of the partnership that the disappearance appeared to end.

Colleen's return and the changed meaning of the loss

Colleen's eventual return overturns the premise on which Willa's mourning and retirement rested. Willa later admits that, deep down, she may not have believed Colleen was truly gone, since no body had ever been found. She had kept going back to clean a house every few months but had never considered putting it on the market; the lack of closure had left the loss suspended. She had also refused to let Corey stay there, a decision she regretted at the time but later felt relieved about.

When Willa asks whether Colleen will play volleyball again, Colleen says she does not know and will not return immediately. She needs time to adjust to life again and may finish the book she worked on during her forced time away. The conversation does not supply a complete account of what happened to her at sea or how the disappearance was produced; it does establish that her presumed death was wrong and that returning home does not instantly restore her former life. Willa, meanwhile, says she is going to start coaching, a role she had already discovered she loved before her comeback.

The state of uncertainty thus changes without disappearing from the story's emotional history. Colleen is no longer absent in the sense Willa once feared, but the years of presumed death have already shaped Willa's choices, her grief, and her return to competition. The missing body first denied Willa closure; later, Colleen's survival makes that absence a sign that the supposed ending was never secure.