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but here it was again, cold and smothering as a wet blanket. She shivered.
    â€œAll those years, and Jake would never agree to let me visit him in prison,” Leigh said. “I wanted to, you know. I wrote to him a bunch oftimes when he first went away, but he never answered my letters. He couldn’t bear to see me.”
    â€œHe didn’t want you to see him, you mean. He didn’t want you to think of him as a criminal. He wanted you to remember him the way he was before any of it happened.”
    â€œHe never answered me. Not even once, Chloe. I wrote him for four years straight, and he never answered me—not a letter, not a postcard, nothing. What was I supposed to think about that?”
    â€œThat Jake’s always been a stubborn ass. Not much more to it than that, really.”
    Leigh felt tears starting in her eyes, the shame she’d always felt over what happened threatening to overwhelm her. “He hates me. I’m sure of it.”
    Chloe reached across the table and squeezed Leigh’s hand. “None of it was your fault, Leigh. Jake knows that. End of story.”
    Except it wasn’t the end of the story. The truth was something Jake said they should keep, always, between the two of them. Even Leigh’s grandfather had never known the whole of what had happened that night in the barn. So many times Leigh had wanted to blurt out the truth to Chloe, to her friends in New York, even to Joseph. But she couldn’t. She was too ashamed. How could she admit the truth to them now, after all this time?
    The silence stretched out between them, long and thin and airless. Chloe was looking her full in the face now, all joking aside, and Leigh squirmed under the full weight of her best friend’s gaze, her total and completely serious attention. “There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” Chloe asked. She sat back in her chair and blew out a long, low breath. “Well, let’s hear it, then.”
    Leigh flagged down the waitress and ordered them both a couple of fingers of bourbon on the rocks.
    â€œDamn,” Chloe said moments later, watching the waitress putdown their drinks. “That bad, huh?”
    â€œYes,” Leigh said. She gulped the bourbon as fast as she could. It burned pleasantly going down, spreading through her throat and into her belly, but it couldn’t get rid of the cold pit of fear that lived at the bottom of her. That always lived at the bottom of her. “I can’t right now. I have to get ready for my talk tomorrow. I still have some notes to jot down. Maybe soon. But not today, Chloe, okay?”
    Chloe looked at Leigh sideways, as if she’d never seen her friend before, as if she were seeing everything new. “All right,” she said, rubbing her hand over her hair again, the tactful gesture, “but only because I love you. Otherwise I’d strangle it out of you right now.”
    â€œI know. Can you drop me off at the conference? All I can manage right now is a hot bath. I just need to be alone for a little while. A little rest. We can go out again later, have a real night out if you want one.”
    â€œOf course I want one,” Chloe said. “But this discussion isn’t over.”
    â€œI would be surprised if it were.”
    The Austin Writers’ Conference was located on a vineyard just outside the city limits, a stunning old Texas estate in the Hill Country dotted with tiny stone guest cottages, a dining pavilion, and an enormous stone-and-timber mansion that would serve for the next week as the conference center. As the guest of honor, Leigh had a little cottage to herself on a hillside with the view of the valley below, the miles of green vineyards and rolling hills. A cozy place with a single room dominated by a large canopy bed, a fieldstone fireplace, and a river-stone bathroom, it was too large for Leigh, but she’d nearly cried at the beauty of the