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nice, isn’t it?” Irene said at last.
    â€œI like it here,” Grace told her.
    â€œWill you be staying long?”
    â€œThree months. Maybe.”
    â€œThree months! That’s good.” Letting go, her mother stood. “I love you, Grace. I didn’t say it enough, and I…I let you down. But I do love you.”
    Grace didn’t know how to respond. So she asked the question she’d wanted to ask Irene for a long time. “Does ignoring something ugly mean it doesn’t exist, Mom?”
    Her mother studied her for several minutes, her eyes clouding with her own pain. “Does acknowledging it make it go away?” she countered. “I did what I had to do. Someday I hope you’ll forgive me for that.” With a final wave, she set off across the porch, her heels clacking on the wooden boards until she reached the lawn. “I’ve got an appointment. Call me later if…if you’d like to see me again.”
    â€œI’ll call,” Grace said and watched her go.
    Â 
    The cool, dim interior of the Hill Country Pizza & Pasta Parlor finally brought Grace a welcome reprieve from the heat. She’d just showered, but it was the hottest part of the day and she already felt sticky again. The air had grown muggier and muggier all afternoon,but it had yet to rain. She guessed the rain would fall tonight as a constant drizzle.
    â€œHere’s your pizza.”
    The teenage girl who’d taken her order hovered at the table with a small pie. As Grace moved her salad to the side, the door opened and a small group of men walked in.
    â€œThank you,” she said to the waitress and immediately averted her face. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone, didn’t want to be noticed or drawn into conversation. She’d only come to have an early supper and to escape the heat.
    But it wasn’t three minutes later that she heard the same men talking about her.
    â€œI swear it’s her, Tim.”
    â€œGrinding Gracie? Nah…”
    â€œIt is! Rex Peters told me she was coming back to town.”
    â€œWhat for?” someone else asked. “I thought she’d become an assistant district attorney somewhere. There was an article about her in the paper.”
    Grace couldn’t decipher the response. She told herself to block them out and finish her food. But a moment later, someone gave a low whistle and said something about how good she looked, and she couldn’t help glancing over.
    One of the men stood at the front counter. He had his back to her as he ordered, but the other four were the jocks she’d admired so much in high school. Seeing them made her skin crawl. She no longer wanted to be here, didn’t want to acknowledge them. She wasn’t the person she used to be.
    â€œMaybe we don’t recognize her with her clothes on,” Joe Vincelli said. The meaningful snicker thatwent with those words brought his name back to Grace right away. He was the reverend’s beloved nephew. He’d also coined the humiliating nickname that had been written on her locker and echoed after her in the halls.
    â€œShut up, she’ll hear you,” someone growled. Was it Buzz Harte? She couldn’t be sure. He seemed to have changed the most; he’d certainly lost a lot of hair.
    More murmuring and a few muffled guffaws made Grace’s ears burn. Heart pounding, she stared down at her plate. Fourteen or fifteen years ago, she’d had sex with at least three of these men in fumbling back-seat trysts or behind a building. Obviously, they remembered those encounters with far more relish than she did. She didn’t know how she could’ve allowed anyone to use her so terribly, especially the boys who’d attended high school with her.
    Except that she’d been searching for something she couldn’t find….
    Feeling faint, she wiped off the sweat beading on her upper lip, and wondered if she