Willa's grief over Colleen being presumed dead

Willa Ashford’s grief over Colleen Sherman’s presumed death is both a rupture in her life and the force that changes how she understands sport, friendship, and the time she has left. Because Colleen was her best friend, teammate, and chosen family, Willa initially cannot imagine returning to volleyball without her. Yet grief does not remain a command to withdraw: as Willa begins to play again, she finds a way to carry Colleen’s memory forward, and Colleen’s eventual return reveals how little certainty the presumed loss had ever allowed.

The loss behind the grief

Willa and Colleen’s bond began long before the disappearance that left Willa mourning. After Willa moved from indoor volleyball to beach volleyball, Colleen, already experienced on the beach circuit, taught her the game. They became teammates and best friends over the next ten years, and their closeness extended beyond sport. When their parents died in a small-plane crash into the Adriatic Sea during a trip to Croatia, both women were left without parents or siblings. They became each other’s only family. Colleen’s disappearance therefore reopened a profound earlier loss while removing the person Willa had always relied on when life became unbearable.

Willa responds first by stepping away from the game that had joined them. After Colleen is presumed dead, she has no desire to compete and cannot imagine another partner. She hangs up her bikini and vows not to look back. The decision is not simply a change of career: beach volleyball is bound up with the friendship and shared history that now hurt to confront. Her grief makes a future without Colleen difficult to picture, while the loss of her parents helps explain why Colleen’s absence feels like the loss of her last immediate family member.

Withdrawal and a changed sporting role

Retirement gives Willa a different way to remain connected to volleyball. She takes an unpaid assistant coaching job at a high school and discovers that she loves teaching the sport. Her young players absorb the knowledge she offers, and she begins considering other openings, including head-coaching positions. This is not an uncomplicated break from her athletic identity: Willa knows she will always be known as a beach-volleyball player, but she also remembers beginning on an indoor team and loves both forms of the sport. Coaching lets her keep the game in her life without immediately returning to the beach as a competitor.

That alternative does not erase her grief or settle the question of whether to play again. When prominent executives, sponsors, and donors ask her to return for the tournament in Serenidad, their appeal places a new responsibility beside her private loss. The tournament is the last opportunity for a United States team to secure a place in the next Olympic Games. Although the United States has been dominant in the sport, it has not yet qualified a team for those Games. Willa comes to understand the invitation as a matter of the legacy she shared with Colleen, not simply an individual comeback, and decides she cannot let that legacy end with Colleen’s disappearance.

Returning to competition without leaving grief behind

Willa’s return is an act of decision rather than a sudden cure. After searching her own feelings and speaking at length with Victor Bello, she agrees to compete. Her prospective partner is Tabby, selected after Denise Salazar breaks two bones in her leg. Willa and Tabby have only six days to develop their partnership before facing elite international teams, so Willa’s return carries practical uncertainty as well as emotional weight. The short preparation period makes the pairing a demanding new undertaking, not a replacement for the long partnership she had with Colleen.

The Olympic stakes also make the distinction between national qualification and personal selection important. The tournament offers one of the final routes to a United States place, but earning that place would not guarantee that Willa and Tabby themselves would be chosen to compete at the Games. At the tournament’s opening, Oskar Latu explains a sixteen-team, three-day format: teams that lose in the opening round go home, while later losses can send teams into an elimination bracket with another chance to reach the final. Five matches separate Willa and Tabby from the qualifying result. Willa nevertheless accepts the challenge because securing a place for the country, and preserving the legacy associated with Colleen, matters even if the outcome does not promise Willa a place on the Olympic team.

As she plays, Willa begins to experience pleasure rather than only obligation. After a successful shot against an opponent, she feels like her old self: her timing has returned, her body is fit, and her connection with Tabby is working. The significance is not that she has forgotten Colleen. Willa imagines that Colleen would be glad to see her enjoying the sport again, and she recognizes that, had their positions been reversed, she would have wanted Colleen to continue living fully. Grief still comes in waves, but it is increasingly followed by peace, as if Willa can make room for the possibility that her friend would want her to pursue her dreams and be happy.

Colleen’s death also sharpens Willa’s awareness that life is short and tomorrow is not guaranteed. She believes she would have regretted refusing the chance to compete again; the same recognition makes her less willing to ignore her attraction to Colt Fontaine, despite the inconvenient timing. The book does not present this urgency as proof that Willa and Colt are destined for each other. Rather, the loss has made regret itself more tangible: grief changes the choices she is prepared to postpone, without dictating what those choices must become.

Empathy, uncertainty, and the return of Colleen

Willa’s experience of loss shapes her response to another woman’s death. After a woman who tried to kill Willa is shot, Willa feels horror at the killing while recognizing that Colt Fontaine and his coworkers may have saved her life. She also hears that the woman had a young daughter and mourns for the child, understanding the pain of losing a mother as a wound that does not disappear with age. The response holds fear, relief, and compassion together; Willa’s grief does not make her indifferent to the circumstances of the woman’s death, but it allows her to recognize the daughter’s loss even amid danger.

The uncertainty surrounding Colleen’s absence remains central. Willa has forced herself to visit and clean their home every few months, but never considered putting it on the market. Looking back, she wonders whether she had never fully believed Colleen was gone. Colleen’s body was never found, and Willa had no closure. That unresolved absence distinguishes her mourning from a settled acceptance: she has tried to build a life around the presumed death while some part of her remains unable to treat it as certain.

When Colleen is home again, Willa’s grief gives way not to an instant return to their former life but to the work of adjustment. Colleen does not know whether she will play volleyball again and says she needs time to adapt to life; she may instead finish the book she began while away. Willa asks about Colleen’s wishes because she understands how much the sport meant to her, but does not assume that the old partnership can simply resume. Willa, meanwhile, says she plans to start coaching and recalls that she loved the work even before competing with Tabby. The reunion thus changes the question from how Willa can go on without Colleen to how both women will live after what happened.

Meaning of the state

Willa’s grief moves through withdrawal, renewed action, and a return to relationship under radically changed circumstances. Volleyball first signifies a shared life that seems impossible to continue alone; coaching then offers a way to preserve the sport without forcing a competitive comeback. The Serenidad tournament turns remembrance into action, but Willa’s growing enjoyment shows that the choice also belongs to her own future. Colleen’s return finally exposes the limits of mourning built around an unresolved disappearance: Willa had to live with the possibility of death without proof, and reunion cannot undo the separation or the need to readjust. Her movement toward coaching and renewed happiness does not cancel her grief; it shows that loving Colleen and continuing with life can coexist.