“Don’t think you’re getting away that easily.” Madeleine clinked her glass against Susan’s and nudged her in the side. “Not when we’ve come all the way here to find out the gossip on your love life.”

“There is no gossip. Me and McGraw hardly have anything to do with each other. Which is exactly how I like it.”

Beebz’s eyes lit up. “Interesting how Madeleine was asking you about your love life, and you went straight to McGraw.”

“Shut up.” Susan’s grip on her tumbler tightened, her knuckles turning white.

“So, what I’m deducing from this”—Madeleine indicated the scowl that had blackened Susan’s expression—“is that if there were any juicy liaisons, then those liaisons would not be with some new and sexy foreign student, but with a tall and taciturn gentleman you’ve known since you were a scrappy little tween.”

“Stop talking now.”

Beebz picked up where Madeleine had left off. “Someone who already knows all your darkest secrets. Someone who knows where the bodies are buried because he helped dig the graves . . .”

Susan slammed her tumbler down so hard that the whisky slopped out and onto the tabletop.

“What did go wrong there, anyway?” Madeleine asked, and the two leaned over the table in a remarkably good impression of Esther.

“I need the loo.” Susan stood abruptly and shoved her way through the crowd.

It wasn’t until she was leaning over the sink and glaring at her own reflection that Susan realized that when Esther had last looked at her like that—only a week previously—Susan hadn’t stormed off in a huff.

She’d told her the same thing she’d told Daisy earlier that morning.

Not quite the full story, as such. She’d let her friends assume that the rift arose from wounded pride, but that wasn’t it, not really. It was that she’d thought McGraw was more than just some cute boy. He was her friend, her ally; yet he’d left her to battle with her feelings on her own.

It wouldn’t be this way if McGraw had called Susan just once two summers before . . .

God. Even silently admitting this to her reflection in the privacy of the ladies’ bathroom was excruciating.

And yet there was a part of her that could imagine how easy it would be to tell Esther and Daisy. After all, she’d already told them things about herself that she’d never told anyone else.

A most discomfiting thought. And also . . . kind of a nice one.

Friendship: so bloody confusing.

When Esther pulled the door open, expecting the sweet aural embrace of angry music and a vision of sweaty bodies, she was met with a roomful of people seated around many small tables, lights bright and voices low.