“She wanted to run away, assume a new identity, a new life. When I told her there was no way I’d leave, things got ugly. She got hysterical, made threats. She was stalking me, driving past the house. She even went to the office where your mom worked, to check her out! I didn’t find out ’til later that Sherri knew exactly who Colleen was.”

“What happened next?”

“She was calling me all the time, driving past the house, acting so crazy, I thought I’d lose my mind,” Brice said. “I couldn’t sleep. I got ulcers.” He looked over at his former partner.

“I told Jimmy what was going on with Colleen, all the wild threats. He told me he’d handle it.”

“And I did,” Zee said. “I made her understand that if she was going to go, she was going to go alone. We got her a fake driver’s license and a new social security card. It wasn’t that hard back then, before everything was computerized. She told me she was going to withdraw all the money from her and Allen’s savings account, hop a bus to Atlanta and start a new life.”

“Is that what she did?” Drue asked.

“As far as I knew, it was,” Brice said. “When she disappeared like she did, I thought that was a sign. That Sherri and I were getting a chance to start over. That I could make things right with her.”

Zee was staring toward the door, watching people drift into the bar.

“Jimmy?” Drue asked. “Colleen never did get on that bus, did she?”

“No,” Zee said. “She never did.”

He took a long swallow of beer and recounted the night, decades earlier, when Sherri, hysterical and already half drunk, had called him at home to say that she’d killed her husband’s lover, and was about to kill herself.

Brice stared, silent and uncomprehending, as his oldest friend told the story.

Zee sipped his beer and put the sunglasses on again.

Drue buried her head against her father’s chest and sobbed. When she finally regained her composure, Brice handed her a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, and she blew her nose.

“You told me you could handle the truth,” Zee said apologetically.

“Because I thought, at first, Dad killed her. Then, I was sure it was you. I never dreamed Mom”—she said, sniffling—“Mom was capable of something like that.” She fixed her father with an accusing stare. “And you never suspected Colleen was dead? At all?”

“I didn’t want to know,” he admitted. “For years, I never stopped looking over my shoulder, wondering if one day, Colleen would just show up, and destroy my life for good. She was … unbalanced. It’s no excuse for what happened, or how I let her down, but looking back, I think now, maybe, she’d be diagnosed as bipolar.”