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Kira hadn’t liked the mirror, personally. But she had developed a discerning eye for what would sell, attending endless estate, moving, redecorating, divorcing, and quietly-gone-bust-or-got-indicted sales scattered around Vero Beach and the barrier islands. Accepting or politely refusing items offered to her for resale by the well-heeled of the Treasure Coast or their disinterested heirs. Learning through lean years at the beginning, that her taste didn’t always align with that of her clients.

She thought the mirror was too ornate. Venetian, an antique over-the-top exercise with floral motifs and elaborate glass scallops arranged around beveled glass panels. But it was in perfect condition, without a chip or crack, and the price at the estate sale was a ridiculously low five hundred dollars. She knew Sarah, the estate liquidator; their livelihoods both involved the resale of gently worn possessions of the wealthy to those who aspired. “What’s the story on the mirror?” she asked, and Sarah shrugged. “The heirs don’t like it,” she said. “The daughter said price it to sell. We did.”

She would put it in her shop at two thousand, five hundred. She was confident it would leave her hands within a week at that price.

Tom, her moving contractor, didn’t like the mirror either and didn’t mince words. “Goddam thing bit me,” he said when he brought it to the store, carefully wrapped and padded, and showed her a cut across his palm. “Be careful handling that thing.”  Two weeks later he was dead. He’d gone fishing in the lagoon. His hands had been in the water. Vibrio vulnificus had gotten into the cut and killed him, eating his flesh as it spread, from his hand to his arm to the rest of him.

She hoped the mirror would sell soon. Poor Tom. Mindful of his parting caution, she’d hung it on the wall of her shop with her hands in heavy suede work gloves. It was heavy, but she was stronger than she looked; the hours at the gym lifting weights to maintain her figure had paid off. She added an extra thousand to the final check she owed Tom for the past month’s moves, including the mirror, and sent it to his widow. It didn’t make her feel any better. Every time she caught sight of her own reflection in the mirror, she disliked what she saw. She looked hardened, cynical, rapacious. At complete odds with her mental image of herself as just another honest immigrant trying to run a business in Paradise.

☠️☠️☠️

A few weeks later, the mirror was still with her, watching her as she went about her work arranging, displaying, tagging the objects of her trade. She was thinner, she noticed as she passed it, eyes half-averted. Thinner and older. Thinner she didn’t mind so much. Older wasn’t great for business. People liked to buy beautiful things from beautiful people.

On Tuesday, Angela stopped in. Kira had been cultivating Angela for months. Her blonde, trim, tanned and fashionably togged image regularly appeared in glossy local magazine ads designed to secure buyers and sellers for her real estate brokerage. Angela had expensive tastes, but she was no fool. Angela appreciated Kira’s consignment shop for its primary value: creating the appearance of wealth without necessarily having to possess it.

The mirror drew Angela immediately. “Where did you find this beautiful thing?” she asked, just brushing the edges with tastefully lacquered fingertips. “A house on one of the barrier islands,” Kira replied. Angela flipped the dangling price tag over and looked at the figure. “Would you take two thousand?”  Kira hesitated for just a moment, then smiled her brightest smile. “For you, yes.”  Thank God, she thought, I’ll finally get rid of it.

Angela stepped over to Kira’s desk with her credit card. “I’ll need it delivered,” she told Kira. “What’s the name of your moving guy, again?”

Kira’s face fell. “I’m without a mover right now. Tom passed away unexpectedly.”

Angela frowned. “He was just a young guy, wasn’t he?” Kira nodded. “I guess you could describe it as an accident, but he got very sick, very fast.”

“That’s too bad,” Angela said. Kira wasn’t entirely sure if she meant Tom’s death, or the inconvenience of having to arrange a different mover. “Well, I’ll find somebody to pick it up and have them call you, then.”

For the first time, Kira was glad to see Angela go. She was even happier to see the mirror go when Angela’s mover picked it up three days later.

The mirror came back within a month.

☠️☠️☠️

Kira was at her desk, deep into researching auction values on Chinese porcelain, when her cell phone rang. Distracted, she just swiped to answer automatically. At first, she heard only the rushing sound of an open cell phone line, wind blowing in the background. She nearly hung up, thinking it was a wrong number, when she heard someone whisper her name. Then the call dropped. The caller ID showed Angela’s number.

Kira hit the phone icon below the number to call back. Her call rolled over to Angela’s cool, businesslike realtor voice, asking Kira to leave a callback number and promising earnestly that your call was very important and she would return it just as soon as possible.

She scrolled through the customer contact list on her laptop. There it was. Angela’s address. A beachside condo on A1A, about 20 minutes away. She flipped the sign on the door from Open to Closed, got her keys, bag and phone, locked up, and got into her car. All these years in the U.S, and she was still inclined to check things out for herself before she called the police.

She didn’t have to call them, as it turned out. When she reached Angela’s oceanfront high rise, pulsing blue and red lights were already washing over the pale pink stucco exterior. A neon green ambulance was nearby. Kira felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. She parked in a visitor space and began walking to the entrance when she noticed a cluster of people, some of them crying and gesturing at the police offers standing nearby.

A police officer stopped her. “Do you live here, miss?” he asked. “No,“ she answered. “I came because I got a call from someone who lives here. A client of mine. The call was strange, and she didn’t answer when I called her back.”

“And who is your client?” he asked.

“Angela Giannetti.”  The officer turned toward the cluster of people around the other police officers. “Simms,” he shouted, beckoning with his arm. “Over here.”  The knot in Kira’s stomach grew a jagged coating of ice. A police officer detached herself from the crowd at the entrance and walked over.

Kira answered her questions dutifully, without betraying impatience. Name, address, what was her relationship to Angela, the phone call that brought her here. Finally, Kira couldn’t stand not knowing any more. “Please, can you just tell me what happened? Is Angela all right?” She was already confident that the answer to that question was no.

The two officers exchanged looks. The male officer shrugged.

Officer Simms spoke. “I’m sorry to tell you that Ms. Giannetti is deceased. We appreciate your answering our questions here, but we would like you to come to the station and give us a statement about her call to you. We’re on Twentieth Street.”

Kira nodded calmly, betraying no emotion. “Of course.”  It was never wise to antagonize the authorities. A lesson she had absorbed with her baby food.

A day after she gave her statement at the police station, the story of Angela’s death reached the local news. Various outlets carried it, with varying degrees of breathless sensationalism. Some with barely concealed schadenfreude. Angela had been young, wealthy and attractive. People, Kira thought, couldn’t resist a story of something terrible happening to someone who had everything.

Angela had gone over her condo’s seventh floor balcony railing and landed on the concrete pool deck below, in front of a dozen horrified witnesses either in the pool itself or lounging on poolside chaises. Some of whom spoke to the media off camera, on the condition that their names not be used. And no wonder. Kira was sickened at one account, comparing Angela’s landing poolside to a smashed watermelon.

A week later, Kira attended Angela’s memorial service. There was no casket; instead, a large portrait photo of a smiling Angela on an easel stood next to a table filled with expensive flowers surrounding a tasteful silver urn. Kira was surprised how few people were there. Angela had been prominent in the community, involved with multiple worthy non-profit boards. Aside from any other motivations, the visibility and connections had certainly been good for her real estate business. Her death was ruled a suicide by the coroner; apparently, at least one witness saw Angela climb onto her balcony railing, sway back and forth gracefully like a circus performer for just a moment, arms outstretched, then swan dive to the concrete below.

Which cleared Angela’s husband Marco, who had been home at the time. Kira had met him briefly a few times at various social events. At the brief memorial service, he sat alone, dark glasses concealing his eyes, hands dangling loosely between his knees. Kira was reminded of a boxer sitting in his corner of the ring, too tired to get up and fight anymore. After the service, she sought him out to tell him how sorry she was.

She reintroduced herself when she reached him after the short line of mourners each shook his hand on the way out of the crematorium-cum-funeral home. Then walked away, shaking their heads.

She had just stepped away when she heard him speak to her again. “Hey,” he said. “You’re the one who sold Angela that mirror.”  His tone sounded accusatory. She turned around. “Yes, that’s right.”

“I want the goddam thing gone. Today.” he said flatly. “I never want to see it again.”

“Was there some problem with it?” she asked, keeping her tone calm and even. The man had certainly been through something terrible; it was enough to make anyone act strangely.

“I guess you could say so,” Marco spat. “I think it killed her.”

Kira stared at him, dumbfounded. She realized her mouth was open and shut it with a snap she felt in her molars.

“She stood in front of the damned thing, staring at herself, for at least an hour that day. I called her name; she didn’t even hear me. She was in some kind of fucking trance. Then she turned away from it, finally. She looked straight through me, smiled, and walked out to the balcony. I saw her make a call; then she dropped her phone by her feet. I saw her climb onto the railing. All I could look at was her bare feet, flexing on that railing, rolling back and forth to keep her balanced. I was afraid if I tried to grab her, she’d fall. I shouted her name again and again, but…you know the rest. Along with everyone else in southeast Florida.”

She knew there was no reasoning with him. Grief made people crazy. All she could do for Angela now was humor the man she left behind.

“I’ll take it away,” she said. “When would you like me to pick it up?”

“Now,” he said. “I’m going to go have a drink. My lawyer is there at the condo. I’ll call him to let you in.”

Wordlessly, she turned away, got into her car and drove to Angela’s seashell pink building. Her heels tapped in the cool marble entryway as she made her way to the concierge at a desk in front of the elevators. She gave her name and the unit number; he nodded, spoke briefly into his cell phone, then waved her on after she signed the guest log. No mention of what had happened. Kira reflected that one thing people in his job got paid for was their ability to keep their mouths shut. Not unlike her own business. When items came into her hands through misfortune, people didn’t want others to know about it.

On seven, she stepped out of the elevator. A door opened on the ocean side of the hallway and a man stepped out to wait for her. “Kira?” he asked, putting his hand out to shake hers. “Bradley Summers. Marco’s attorney. Thank you for coming. I’m sure you were surprised by the request.”

“Yes,” she said guardedly. “But grief does strange things to people.”

“It does, indeed,” he said, and ushered her into the apartment. It was breathtaking, of course; a glass sliding door opened onto the balcony, and beyond the balcony, the ocean rolled in all its blue and green magnificence. Automatically, Kira cast her eye around the room, identifying pieces by various designers. Whatever else could be said about Angela, she had cohesive taste; the room fit together in a harmonious whole that evoked the sea outside the windows.

Except for the mirror. Angela had had it hung on the wall opposite the windows giving on the sea; obviously, she’d meant to draw the reflection of the ocean inward into the room. But it was jarringly wrong for the room, Kira thought. Too ornate, too much for such cool, minimalist surroundings. Maybe Angela had liked the contrast.

Summers wasted no time. He gestured Kira to a seat on the white leather sofa, then excused himself to the hallway again with his cell phone. While she waited, Kira’s thoughts swirled. None of this made any sense. Why had Angela called her, of all people, just before she jumped?  Marco said she had been staring at the mirror. What was that about? And why would you gaze into a mirror, then kill yourself in front of your husband? She had liked Angela’s hard-nosed practicality very much; they were kindred spirits in that regard.

Her train of thought was interrupted by Summers re-entering the room, flanked by two expressionless men in work uniforms. One carried an armful of quilted moving pads. Summers jerked his head at the mirror. The two workmen stepped forward. Two silent minutes later, the mirror was draped in pads, lifted from the wall, and carried out the front door to a waiting rolling cart.

Pointedly, Summers held the front door open, and looked at Kira. Message received, she thought; it was time to go. “I’ll ride down with you,” he said, and closed the door behind him. The hallway was already empty; the workmen must have taken a service elevator.

Alone in the elevator, Summers looked at Kira. “I’m sure I can rely on your discretion,” he said. His eyes were the color of ice. “Mr. Giannetti is distraught, as I’m sure you can understand. It would be extremely unfortunate if any…speculation about his emotional state were to become known. And I’m sure the fact that he was distraught in relation to an item you sold Ms. Giannetti would not be helpful to you or your business. Nor would the fact that Ms. Giannetti called you shortly before her death. A refund of the mirror’s purchase price will not be necessary. Consider it compensation for your trouble. Do we understand each other?”

“Absolutely,” she said. Fucking bastard, she thought. What kind of idiot does he think I am, that he needs to threaten my business and bribe me to stay quiet? It’s an insult to my intelligence. But then, she reflected bitterly, Americans sometimes heard a trace of foreign accent and automatically deducted fifty IQ points. Especially bastards like Summers.

The two workmen were waiting by the front door with their cart and the mirror. Summers walked out with all three of them, evidently ensuring that both the mirror and Kira were indisputably gone. Kira led the way to her SUV. The maintenance duo, silent as ever, lifted the mirror in its blanket of pads and slid it smoothly into the back of her vehicle. One man shut the hatch.

She got in, pushed the start button, and drove toward the exit to turn on to A1A. She glanced in her rear-view mirror. Summers was still standing there, watching her go. He’s thorough, I’ll give him that much, she thought.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked the mirror. It rode in silence with her, back to the shop.

☠️☠️☠️

She re-hung the mirror on its hook in the shop carefully, again wearing heavy work gloves. She paused before hanging a new tag on it. I want it to move, she thought. And wrote the tag for one thousand dollars. First Tom, then Angela. The mirror might be perfect – of its kind – but it had the feel of bad luck about it. Superstitious idiot, she told herself. I guess you can take the girl out of Hungary, but you can’t take Hungary out of the girl.

Her nagymama had an endless litany of superstitions and omens, down to what it meant if a black cat crossed your path going one way versus going the opposite direction. It was lucky if a spider landed on you. That one had given Kira pause when she was a little girl. She wasn’t too crazy about spiders, honestly.

What had her grandmother said about mirrors?  She thought back to the days of sitting at the kitchen table, eating cookies and listening to nagymama tell her stories. Nostalgia stabbed at her heart; she could almost smell baking sugar. Nagymama had died after Kira came to the States; at the time, she didn’t have the money for the airfare to go back for the funeral.

Thinking about funerals reminded Kira what nagymama had said about mirrors. If someone died, you covered all the mirrors in the house or turned them to the wall. If you didn’t, the soul of the departed could catch sight of their reflection, then become trapped in the mirror, looking out at the living ever after. Idiot, she chided herself. I loved her, but this is nonsense. Tales from an old lady told to a child.

But it gave her an idea. She wanted to know what happened to who had owned the mirror before it came to her. She would call Sarah about the estate sale; all she knew right now was that the previous owner was dead.

☠️☠️☠️

Kira met Sarah for coffee a few days later. There was a new place near the Village Shops in Vero she had been wanting to try; at least it would get her out of her own shop. And away from the mirror; its continued presence gave her a nagging anxiety, like a low-grade fever she could not shake. If the shop was busy, she could lose herself in chatting with customers. When it was quiet, she normally reviewed upcoming sale notices, photos of items customers wanted to sell, or researched pricing or provenance on the net. With that damned mirror on the wall behind her, she found herself constantly glancing over her shoulder. Especially if she was alone in the shop. Her thoughts were locked in an endless idiot circle.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall; did you cause a girl to fall?

The nights were worse, though. Before the mirror re-entered her life, she had usually dropped off within ten minutes of her head hitting the pillow. Now, her sleep was an uneasy doze penetrated by disturbing dreams.

Last night had been bad. She kept trying to turn her back to the mirror but the room spun around her, forcing her to turn and face it again and again. Finally, with the mirror before her, she struggled against the compulsion to open her eyes to meet her own reflection. In the illogic that only makes sense in dreams, she knew with absolute certainty it would be the death of her to catch a glimpse of her own face. She awakened trying to scream, dreaming that her eyes were being forced open.

She found a table. Her phone buzzed; Sarah texting she was running a few minutes late. While Kira waited, she scrolled through old emails to find the mirror’s sale notice. Sarah handled so many, she wanted to be sure to ask about the right one.

Kira saw Sarah coming toward the coffee shop door. She exhaled. Unconsciously, she’d half-believed something would intervene and prevent their meeting. Enough, already, she told herself.

She rose to greet Sarah. They exchanged cheek kisses. Sarah looked wonderful, Kira thought; she was wearing a dress Kira had seen in the window of a nearby boutique a few weeks before and hadn’t even dared to price. Slim, tanned, healthy. In the mirror that morning, Kira’s dark circles had been very pronounced. She had always had the delicate shadows under her eyes that many Eastern European women had; but today It had taken quite a bit of concealer to look even halfway decent.

Sarah’s first words didn’t help. “Kira, what’s wrong? You look like you haven’t been sleeping.”

“Nothing, really,” Kira answered, forcing cheer into her voice. “Just some things with the shop. Let’s get our coffee and a little something, and I’ll tell you. It’s kind of funny.”

The server made his way to their table, expertly twisting and turning between closely placed two-tops. They gave him their orders. Kira kept the conversation light – mutual acquaintances, the current show at the Vero Beach Museum of Art – until his return.

Coffee and plates in front of each of them, Sarah looked at Kira directly. “OK, give it up,” she said, smiled, and waited.

Kira took a deep breath. “You know that estate sale about seven weeks ago? Where I bought that Venetian mirror?”  Sarah nodded. “I know this is a really strange question, but what happened to the owner?  I know it was an estate sale – you said the heirs didn’t want the mirror – but if you don’t mind my asking, how did he die?”

Sarah’s smile faded immediately. “You know my clients expect confidentiality,” she said. Kira nodded. “I promise you, our conversation stays at this table,” she said. “I have my own reasons for wanting this to stay quiet. Maybe I should tell you first why I’m asking, but I didn’t want you to think I was…well…imagining things.”  Or thinking I was flat-out fucking crazy, is what I really meant, isn’t it? Kira thought.

She told Sarah, as briefly as possible, about Tom’s cut and his death, Angela’s call before she died. She left out what Marco had told her, other than that she had taken the mirror back at his request. “Ever since,” she finished, “I can’t seem to shake the feeling that that mirror is bad luck, somehow. So, I was wondering, what happened to the person who owned it before?”  Please tell me he died peacefully in his sleep at the age of one hundred, she thought.

Sarah still hesitated, biting her lip as if trying to keep from speaking. “This conversation never happened, OK?” she said. Kira nodded again, her right hand going up unconsciously, as if swearing an oath. “The owner died in an accident. He was only fifty-six.”

“What kind of accident?” Kira asked. Her mouth was going dry; she sipped her coffee. The ice-covered knot in her stomach was back; the coffee was not melting it. We are getting to be old friends, she thought.

“Well, the accident itself wasn’t a secret,” Sarah said, and winced. “Do you remember hearing about a bad accident at the airport?”  Kira nodded. She did remember what Sarah was talking about, at least superficially. A man had been killed near the private aviation terminal. She didn’t immediately recall his name; the reports had identified him as a successful Vero Beach entrepreneur with global business interests. She searched her memory, unsure of the details. “He was struck by some piece of equipment, wasn’t he?”  Kira asked. Sarah shook her head. “Close,” she said, “but it was the other way around. Mr. McDonald walked straight into a spinning propeller.”

“My God,” Kira gasped. “His poor family.”

“Yes.” Sarah said. “And not just them. An aircraft mechanic was standing right there, as it happened. He told the investigators that Mr. McDonald came down the steps of the jet he came in on, then stripped to the waist. He laid his jacket and his shirt on the tarmac. Then he started walking toward a plane that was starting up, preparing to taxi. A few feet away, he put out his arms like a little boy playing at being an airplane and ran straight at the propeller, grinning from ear to ear. The mechanic was sprayed with blood and…tissue. So were others nearby, but he was the closest and saw it happen. He hasn’t worked since. He’s being treated for PTSD. He got a lawyer and sued the estate, for irreparable psychological damage caused by Mr. McDonald’s actions. The daughters decided to liquidate everything here and give the mechanic a financial settlement. All parties agreeing not to disclose the terms.”

“How long did Mr. McDonald have the mirror?” Kira asked.

“Not long at all. It was on board the aircraft. He bought it on his last trip.”

☠️☠️☠️

Kira drove to the beach at Treasure Shores. She needed to clear her head. There was no way she wanted to go back to the shop right now. Not after hearing what happened to McDonald. She could just see him, bare-chested, arms extended atilt, making an airplane noise like a little boy as he ran, apparently joyously, toward his death.

She changed her heels for flip-flops, locked her car, then followed the boardwalk to the sand and the rolling blue ocean. A mile of footprints later, in the hard packed sand just above the waterline, she was no closer to knowing what to do, arguing with herself.

You cannot sell it to anyone else.

This is insane. I need to make a living. I’ve been around the damn thing off and on for weeks now and come to no harm. Other than a few bad dreams. There is no such thing as a curse.

Tell that one to nagymama. And see her shake her head in sorrow at you, for ignoring ancient wisdom you snicker at as superstition.

And even if it is cursed, what the hell does it want?  Most “curses” I ever heard of were in revenge for something bad to start with. Betrayal. Murder. Carelessness. Injury, to body or soul or psyche. Whatever. A “curse” amounts to getting even. Rebalancing the scales. An eye for an eye. And is that completely wrong?

It is if it hurts innocent people who didn’t do anything bad. If it hurts only the guilty, maybe not so much.

Yes, but Tom and Angela. Neither was a bad person. What could they possibly have been guilty of? Or McDonald, for that matter?

Maybe it doesn’t care.

Jesus, listen to yourself. A mirror having thoughts or feelings…my God, you are going off the deep end with this crazy shit. Stop it.

Yes, but three people are dead. And those are only the ones that you know of.

I didn’t kill them.

But if you know something will cause harm, and you put it in someone’s hands, you’re complicit. They died in terrible ways. Tom suffered before he died, his flesh painful, then dead and rotting on his body. Angela died smashed and broken, all beauty and dignity fled. McDonald was…vaporized, sprayed all over everything and everybody nearby.

Suddenly, Kira smelled the seaweed rotting above the high tide line. She doubled over; the coffee and pastry of an hour ago came up with a liquid rush of bile onto the sand. She straightened, scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand and turned back. She began retracing her steps along the shoreline. Unbidden, her thoughts resumed chasing each other.

The mirror is old. And fragile. But it survives.

Yes, but it needs human agents. To hang it on a wall. To buy and sell it. To get it from one owner to the next.

That’s the only reason you’ve been safe, Kira. It needs you. To help it do its work.

And what if I refuse?

You know the answer to that question.

☠️☠️☠️

That night Kira dreamed of nagymama. She lay with her head in her grandmother’s lap, in a field of wildflowers and grasses, smelling sweet in the sunlight. Her grandmother was stroking her hair. The weight of her hand on Kira’s forehead was comforting. Kira’s eyes were closed. The sun was warm upon her face. The only sounds were the breezes rustling the grass around them, crickets, and birdsong. She had never been so happy. So safe.

Her grandmother’s voice, soothing, murmuring. It’s not so bad, being dead, you know. Especially if you choose for yourself how it will be. Most of the fear of dying comes from not knowing what will happen to you.

Yes, she told her grandmother, being able to choose is important.

Choosing how is important. But it’s even more important to choose why, her grandmother whispered. The best deaths are for the lives of others.

I remember. You told me that you learned that during the fighting. But you didn’t choose then.

No. But at times I wished I did. Even though your mama was little then and needed me. I wondered if it was right. Not choosing.

It’s hard to know what’s right, Kira said.

Yes, it is.

They were silent together in the grass again. A bee buzzed as it circled a flower. It sipped the nectar as the breeze bent the stem first one way, then the other.

☠️☠️☠️

Kira woke knowing what she had to do. She rose and began her preparations, lips compressed in a thin line. Shower. Clean her teeth. Dress. Drive to the shop. Open the hatch of her vehicle, leave it waiting like an open mouth. Unlock the shop door. Prop it open. Put the heavy work gloves on. Lift the mirror carefully from the wall. Carry it to the car. Lay it in the back. Close the hatch, then get in and drive to where she was going.

She turned onto the Wabasso Causeway Bridge from U.S. 1 a little after sunrise. There were few cars, but a few early fishermen cast their lines from the pedestrian walkway into the water below. She pulled over at the highest part of the bridge, put the car in park, reflexively glanced in her review mirror, and carefully got out. She almost laughed; it would be the supreme irony if she were mowed down by a passing car before she could get rid of the mirror.

She raised the hatch again. She didn’t bother with the gloves this time. Very shortly, the mirror’s ability to hurt anyone else would be ended, in pieces on the bottom of the Indian River lagoon. She would accept the seven years’ ill luck its ruin would bring; it would do far more damage intact. She balanced it carefully against her chest, arms clasped around it, and walked to the edge of the bridge. She let it slide through her arms and fall sixty feet, its weight plummeting straight into the water. Its bottom edge cleaved the water and it disappeared into the silt and sea grass.

Kira looked straight ahead. Instead of the wide, sparkling expanse of the Indian River, the sunlit meadow of her dream was before her. Above the waving grasses, the insects of the field caught the light, tiny motes dancing in the air. Behind a stile, her nagymama stood waiting, one hand shading her eyes, the other hand smoothing her apron. She smiled at Kira and opened her arms. Kira climbed over the stile and walked toward her. It was good to see her again.

☠️☠️☠️

Special to Florida News

Vero Beach Businesswoman Jumps from Wabasso Bridge in Apparent Suicide

VERO BEACH – The body of area businesswoman Kira Almasy was recovered this morning from the Indian River Lagoon, just below the Wabasso Causeway Bridge. Witnesses reported that just after sunrise yesterday, a driver pulled over and stopped in the eastbound right lane of the bridge at its highest point. A woman later identified as Almasy exited the stopped vehicle and removed a large object from its cargo compartment, dropping it over the side of the bridge into the Indian River below. She then climbed over the three-foot tall concrete barrier at the edge of the bridge and stepped off. Police and emergency personnel responded to multiple 911 calls regarding the incident. Almasy was pronounced dead at the scene after police divers recovered her body from the water this morning.

Local fisherman Mel Lewis was fishing from the bridge when the incident occurred. “I don’t know what she dropped in the water,” Mr. Lewis stated, “but I saw it slide out of her arms, and it cut her to ribbons. She was covered in blood. I started toward her to try to help her, but I was too far away to reach her before she went off the bridge.”

Police divers also recovered a large, ornate mirror from the water at the location of the incident. Remarkably, police said it was undamaged.

The comparatively low barrier at the edge of the bridge has been a source of concern to area pedestrians and cyclists for several years, who cite the relative ease with which a person could be knocked off the bridge into the water by an automobile. This tragedy will add to that controversy.

In an unrelated incident at the same location, several fishermen reported a substantial fish die-off near Wabasso Causeway Park which occurred the same day. Snook, redfish, and flounder were among dead fish of all sizes, which numbered well over a thousand.