“I know. Who would think that?” Colleen’s pulse bounced in her temples and she felt the flush of embarrassment begin to creep up.

“Did you have any idea?”

“None. Hallie had never betrayed me in the slightest. We were so close. So close. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t suspect it.”

“I don’t mean to pry. Only talk about it if you want to.”

“Honestly, I didn’t have a clue. She was planning our wedding. Planning our wedding! She was picking out the flowers and the cake and the dresses and I guess she was also picking out her own groom. I didn’t get a tingling sense of anything weird or wrong. I’ve gone over this a million times in my mind and tried to find the one place or time or hint. Hallie, up until then, had never had a serious boyfriend. She was naïve in a way. She’d never stopped living at home, even in college, and although she certainly wasn’t simpleminded or anything like that, she was easily influenced by others.”

Colleen rolled her neck around to shake off the ideas that had so long haunted her. “So he probably seduced her. But I’ve never wanted to know what happened.” She covered her mouth with her hand as a laugh erupted. “No, that’s not true. I totally wanted to know what happened. I just didn’t want it to be Hallie who told me. Or my family—I was too embarrassed. So I’ve just made up my own stories, but I had no idea until she told me the other day.”

“I can only again say I am so sorry. I know it must have broken your heart.”

“Yes. But it felt like more than my heart. I felt like it broke . . . me. Now I come home only to see Dad and Shane. This week is the first time I’ve spoken to Hallie since it happened.”

“You’ve avoided your sister for ten years?”

“Essentially, yes. It took careful planning, but I managed.” She laughed, but he shook his head—he wasn’t going to let her joke her way out of this.

“You know, if there’s one thing out of a million I’ve learned it’s this: when you are powerless over a situation, and everything rises in you to do something, to hurry and do something, sometimes there is just no fixing it. Sometimes there is . . .”

“Don’t you dare say acceptance.” Colleen closed her eyes. “Don’t say it.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Colleen kicked at a fluff of Spanish moss that had fallen to the path. “I want a better solution than that.”

He shrugged. “We all do.”

“Actually I found a better solution than that—build a new and different life.”

“Was it worth it to forfeit what’s here?”