Mourning and Moving Forward

Mourning and Moving Forward is the struggle to keep love for the dead from becoming a prohibition against living. For Willa Ashford, Colleen Sherman’s disappearance and presumed death make volleyball, friendship, and the prospect of a future feel inseparable from guilt. Willa’s return to competition does not erase that grief: it changes what remembrance asks of her, from permanent withdrawal to a life that can still include ambition, affection, and joy.

Loss and the End of a Sporting Life

Willa’s grief is rooted in a bond that began on the court and had become family. She had switched to beach volleyball ten years earlier, after winning an indoor-volleyball gold medal. Colleen, already a veteran of the beach circuit, taught her the game; the two became best friends and as close as sisters. Their parents had died together when their plane crashed into the Adriatic Sea during a trip to Croatia. With no siblings, Willa and Colleen had become each other’s only family. Losing Colleen therefore reopened an older orphanhood while taking away the person Willa had always turned to when life became unbearable.

After Colleen disappeared, Willa could not imagine playing with another partner. She hung up her bikini and vowed not to look back. Her withdrawal was not simply an end to a job: volleyball had shaped her identity, and Colleen had been central to the life Willa built within the sport. Yet retirement also opened a different way of staying close to the game. Willa took an unpaid assistant-coaching position at a high school and found she loved teaching. The young players absorbed what she shared with them, and she began considering other openings, including head-coaching work. Having started indoors on a seven-person team before becoming known as a beach player, she still loved both forms of volleyball.

The Decision to Return

Willa’s comeback begins in conflict between private grief and a public sporting obligation. Executives, sponsors, and donors to the organization overseeing beach volleyball in the United States came to her home and urged her to compete in the upcoming tournament in Serenidad. It was the last opportunity for a United States team to earn a place in the next Olympic Games; without a win, the country that had dominated the international scene in recent years would have no representation. Willa did not accept immediately. She searched her feelings and spoke at length with Vic Bello before deciding that the legacy she shared with Colleen was also at stake. She could not let that legacy die.

The return was made under pressure and with little time to rebuild the partnership that had once made competition feel natural. Willa and Vic reviewed videos of possible partners for a player whose established style had been shaped by years with Colleen. Tabby Hubbard entered the choices at the last minute, after her former partner, Denise Salazar, fell and broke two bones in her leg. Tabby was the strongest available option and eagerly accepted the chance to play with Willa. The new pair had only six full days to develop the coordination needed to face the world’s best. Their short preparation sharpened the question at the heart of Willa’s comeback: whether a new partnership could honor what she had lost without pretending to replace it.

Grief Changes Its Meaning

As Willa and Tabby began winning, Willa felt her old athletic instincts return. Against Ginger Rush and Doreen Parke, her timing and fitness were back, and her connection with Tabby was working. The match’s momentum mattered beyond the score: Willa could enjoy the physical demands of the game again. She imagined Colleen being happy to see her play and recognized that Colleen would not have wanted her to quit a sport she loved simply because Colleen was gone. Willa applied the same measure in reverse: had she died first, she would have wanted Colleen to go on living a long, prosperous life.

Guilt does not vanish in this account; its recurrence is part of the change. Sometimes it still rolls over Willa, but increasingly it gives way to peace and to the sense that Colleen would want her to pursue her dreams and be happy. That imagined encouragement makes grief less like a verdict and more like an ongoing relationship with the friend Willa carries in memory. Willa also understands the cost of postponing life: Colleen’s death has taught her that tomorrow is not guaranteed, and refusing the chance to compete would have become a regret. The same urgency touches her attraction to Colt. The timing is difficult, but Willa no longer treats difficulty as sufficient reason to refuse happiness.

After Loss: Betrayal, Return, and New Work

Moving forward does not mean that Willa’s life becomes free of hurt. After learning of Drew Black’s death and the apparent confession that now seems false, she tells Colleen how wrong she feels for having believed Drew capable of terrible acts. She recounts the threatening notes, exploding vehicles, and fake drug tester. Her response holds remorse and resilience together: the shock and lethargy of the previous night have passed, and she is determined to set those events aside long enough to focus on what comes next. Her ability to continue is not presented as forgetting either betrayal or loss.

Colleen’s eventual return changes the conditions of mourning without undoing the years in which Willa had no closure. Willa had forced herself to clean Colleen’s house every few months but had never considered putting it on the market; deep down, she may not have believed Colleen was truly gone because her body had never been found. Corey Baxter had wanted to stay in the house, but Willa would not let him, a decision she later felt relieved to have made. When the friends speak again, Willa asks whether Colleen wants to play volleyball. She leaves the choice open, recognizing that Colleen had been the best in the world, while Colleen says she needs time to adjust to life and may finish the book she worked on during her forced absence.

Willa, too, now names a future beyond competition: she is going to start coaching. Colleen praises the idea and recalls Willa coaching her through two Olympic Games; Willa modestly insists that Colleen had not needed advice. Their exchange makes the new direction feel continuous with their shared sporting life rather than a rejection of it. Willa had already discovered the pleasure of teaching before her comeback, and now coaching offers a way to pass on the game without making her own worth depend on returning to the top. Her relationship with Colt remains another unresolved part of that future: she wants a long-term life with him but does not know how he feels. The concept’s resolution is therefore not a completed escape from grief, but a permission Willa gradually gives herself—to play, teach, love, and choose what comes next while keeping Colleen’s place in her life.