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left for the university that September.”
    He nodded. “I wrote to you practically every day and phoned almost that often. How could you have possibly believed there was someone else?”
    Her nails cut painfully into her palms. She couldn’t deny that in the beginning he’d contacted her daily. Being separated like that had been miserable for them both. But Simon seemed to have adjusted more quickly than she. “At first you did.”
    “What does that mean?” His eyes narrowed defensively.
    “I … noticed that around November your letters became less frequent.” She lowered her eyes to the quilted placemat on the tabletop. “You didn’t phone nearly as often, either.”
    “I was saving money so I could buy you a Christmas present. The phone bill for October had taken nearly all my trust fund allowance.”
    She had known that, too. But at the time, she’d been so unhappy without him that every day apart had seemed like an eternity. “I knew you were involved with basketball, so I didn’t say anything. But whenever we talked, you were always in such a hurry, and even your letters were getting shorter and shorter.”
    “Angie, I was about to flunk out of two classes because I spent so much time writing and talking to you.”
    It all sounded so petty now. She wanted to tear her eyes away from him but found she couldn’t. His smoldering gaze held her captive, demanding that she continue.
    “The second week in February your mother came into the pharmacy and said she needed to talk to me.” Nervously, her fingers toyed with the fringe around an orange-and-brown plaid placemat. “She … she said that she’d noticed over the holidays that you were unhappy.” This was hard, so much harder than she had ever imagined it could possibly be. Each word waswrenched from her until her voice wavered. “She said you’d found another girl at school, but you felt guilty about me. She didn’t want me to be hurt and offered me the … money to leave town.”
    Simon’s hand reached for hers, gripping it so tightly that it felt as though he had cut off the flow of blood to her fingers. “Angie, I hadn’t.”
    Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I didn’t want to believe her. That’s why I took the bus to see you. If you were going to be rid of me, then you’d have to tell me yourself.”
    Leaning his elbow on the table, Simon wiped a hand over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You were walking in front of the fraternity.” Simon’s own memory of that last meeting was strikingly clear. Her long, shining dark hair had been tied back and her mournful, troubled eyes had searched his. He had known she needed him at that moment, but he couldn’t stand the pressure of another demand.
    “I’d been waiting outside your fraternity for an hour, pacing,” Angie inserted, caught in her own reminiscence. “I wanted so badly to believe it wasn’t true. But you took one look at me and said you hoped to God I wasn’t pregnant. A pregnancy would ruin everything.”
    Simon turned his head and stared out the kitchen window with unseeing eyes. That day had to have been the worst of his life. His grades had been so poor that he was kicked off the basketball team. He’d found Angie after leaving the coach’s office, where he’d gotten the lecture of his life. His father had been to the university earlier that week, berating him. The last thing he needed was to have Angie show up and tell him she was pregnant.
    “And you assumed from what my mother said that everything was true.”
    “It made sense at the time,” she murmured, the tremble in her voice barely noticeable any longer. “It had been weeks since you’d seen me, and when you did, you acted like—”
    “I know how I acted.” Rising to his feet, Simon crossed the room. “So you returned to Groves Point, took the money, and moved out of town.”
    She hadn’t wanted that ten thousand dollars. Clay was the one who’d insisted they take it. Simon owed