Moving to the desk, she stood for a moment, staring down at it, thinking of the murder story and what had bothered her about it. Let me be wrong. Slowly, she touched the on button. It took a moment for the computer to boot up.

Jolene jerked back as the murder story came up on the screen.

Do you remember yet?

Remember the crushing heat that night, wading in the warm creek water, the feel of the grass on your bare feet? Remember sitting on the bank whispering a secret in the dark?

You have a secret, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want to remember that night and the sound of the weather vane groaning in the wind.

You know who killed your mother. You’ve always known. But you don’t want to remember the blade of the knife, dripping bright red with your mother’s blood, or the hand holding it.

Jolene covered her mouth as tears flooded her eyes. She shot out of the computer chair, stumbling back, almost falling. As if she could run away from the words on the screen.

Through the open window, she could smell rain in the air and feel the cool blowing in. She snatched up the phone and dialed Dulcie’s number. There’d been enough secrets. Enough lies. She could no longer live with hers.

The call went straight to voice mail. The trees just outside the window whipped back in the wind, the branches scraping the side of the house like fingers across a blackboard. Dark shadows flickering shapelessly against the coming night.

“If you would like to leave a message...”

“Dulcie, I know. I know what happened that night. I—” The words caught in her throat as she saw something through the thrashing branches.

There was a light on in the schoolhouse.

After their horseback ride, Dulcie soaked in the hot tub, hoping to relieve some of her aches and pains and then showered. “Riding a horse isn’t as romantic as it looks,” she called from the bathroom. “Thank you for taking me, though. I loved seeing the country. It is so beautiful down in the Missouri Breaks. I see why you love it here.”

When she didn’t get an answer, she pulled on her clothes and, finding the bedroom empty, discovered Russell sitting in the living area reading something.

As she moved closer she was startled to see that he was reading the copy of the murder story that Jolene had given her.

The worry in his gaze as he looked up at her scared her.

“Why are you reading that?”

He set the copies aside and sighed. “What if Jolene receives the ending tomorrow at school?”

“That’s not possible. The rainmaker is in jail.”

“What if he isn’t the one writing it?”