Is it, is it really? The voice again. Now you know for certain that Cammie was the liar, the seducer, that Slade didn’t cheat. So are you going to blame him forever? Remember your wedding vows? Would it be so hard to start over? To trust him again? To allow yourself to love him as you so want to do?

“You’re pathetic,” she whispered, but felt the little fissures in her resolve begin to crack, allowing herself to let him into her heart again.

Refusing to think about her crumbling marriage or any thought that it might possibly be repaired, she shampooed and rinsed her hair. Turning under the showerhead, she let the warm water run over her shoulders and down her spine.

You love Slade! You always have. Don’t punish yourself or Slade because of the lies of a dead woman.

“Oh, Cammie.” Val closed her eyes, and images of her sister ran through her brain.

Cammie as a child, chasing their little calico kitten and climbing high into a tree where power lines cut through the branches. Valerie had been frantic, screaming for her to climb down, but both Cammie and the cat were trapped. Cammie frozen and crying, the kitten glued to the bole of the tree, tiny claws digging into the rough bark. The little calico had finally scrambled down the willow’s trunk, and Valerie, fear pounding through her ten-year-old heart, had climbed up and hauled her sister back to safety. She’d scolded the five-year-old, but Cammie, already stubborn and independent, hadn’t cared. Once the danger was over, she’d acted as if it had never existed.

Then there were the high school years, when Cammie, an A student, on the girls’ soccer team and cheerleading squad, had begun dating boys. Older. Younger. It didn’t matter. Their mother had said only two words: Boy crazy.

Which had summed it all up.

She’d stolen her best friend’s boyfriend—maybe he was the kid who had given her that gaudy class ring with the winking red stone; then, while still “in love” with Ben, she had been caught with a student teacher. It had been Cammie’s senior year at St. Timothy’s, and Val had already moved away and graduated from Ole Miss, had already taken the job in Texas, but she’d heard about it. Since Cammie had already passed her eighteenth birthday, no charges had been leveled at the teacher’s aide, who was in his last year of college, but he had been sent packing.

Years later, after Cammie had finished a two-year course in accounting at a junior college, she had had several jobs as well as boyfriends.

Eventually, she’d come to visit Valerie and Slade, and the rest was history. There was the blowup at the ranch, and the next thing Val knew, her sister had decided to become a nun and landed at St. Marguerite’s.