“I believe I know the house you’re talking about,” he said, calmly. “I’m friends of the family. Douglas Walker and I went to Yale together. That’s where his boys go. They’re good kids, the two of them. And I know for a fact that they were away on a family trip to Beaver Creek this week. They’re still there, in fact. I received this picture of them this morning.”

He pressed some buttons on his computer and flipped the thin screen around to face me. Four people were in the photo, covered from head to toe in black-and-white ski gear—orange goggles, beanies, gaiters—standing next to a sign, listing three black diamond courses: Spider, Cataract, Keller Glade. Not an inch of skin was visible. They could have been anyone.

“Actually,” Dean Gerwig continued, “I know their house very well. I’ve been there many times for fundraisers and sponsor dinners. Things of that nature that the Walkers are generous enough to host for the school. And I don’t believe there is a barn in the back, as you’ve described, Elizabeth. They don’t have any animals or cattle. Never have.” He pulled his computer back, clicked a few more buttons, then turned it around. The picture now enlarged on the screen was of an expansive yard. In the daylight, it was hard to connect it to what I remembered. The evergreens looked the same in the back corner, but they would anywhere, I guess. It was just the snowy grass and trees. No barn. No hay. No Ruthie.

He turned the computer back, then leaned toward me. “I encourage you to take a day or two and rethink this accusation, Elizabeth. There are consequences for both of you if you come forward. Especially when your memory has clearly been affected by your inebriation.” He nodded toward the computer, toward the photos that seemed to debunk everything I knew for sure. “Seriously think about that.”

I’d thought about it every day for over four years since.

At the diner, I still wore Ruthie’s clothes. I gained thirty pounds so the Abercrombie T-shirt was stretched to the point of breaking at the seams, and I used a large safety pin to get her jeans closed around my waist. The Eden Diner apron covered it all anyway with its red-and-white horizontal stripes, something Ruthie would have told me never to wear, especially now. Horizontal stripes were a fashion faux pas, she’d say, and I’d have pretended to know that, too.