Christy-Lynn screwed the cap back on her water bottle and set it on the railing. It was true. Well, mostly true. She wasn’t sure writing had ever been a lifelong dream, but it was something she had toyed with—and given up. On Stephen’s say so. But at the moment, she was more intrigued by the anger she saw banked in Wade’s eyes.

“What happened between you two?”

He shrugged, rolling his empty beer bottle back and forth between his palms. “It was years ago.”

“Maybe, but it still bothers you. It’s there every time you talk about him, the same tamped-down fury that’s coming off you right now. So what was it?”

“We were friends. Or I thought we were. Wade didn’t have many friends back then. He had a tendency to suck up all the oxygen in the room. But there was another side of him, one he kept to himself until no one else was around, like when we’d come up here to study. He was different then, laid-back, maybe because there was no one around to impress. But then we’d get back to Charlottesville, and it was like he’d flip a switch. All of a sudden the big man on campus was back.”

Christy-Lynn nodded. She knew exactly what he was talking about. “And what else?”

“He was lazy.”

“That’s it?” She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but criticizing Stephen’s work ethic hadn’t been on the list. “You think cranking out a book a year is lazy?”

“I meant his writing was lazy. He had talent but never bothered to hone it. He was happy just turning out stock stories that leaned on sex or violence to sell. There was never any emotion in his work, never any of himself. That’s the hard part, spilling your guts out onto the page, tapping into the stuff that scares you, crushes you, breaks you wide-open. Stephen couldn’t be bothered.”

Christy-Lynn sat mulling his words, certain there was more to the long-standing rift than he was letting on, something more personal, more painful. “You’re saying you’ve been angry for twenty years because Stephen didn’t live up to his potential?”

“I was laying the groundwork,” Wade replied tightly. “I’m not the only one who thought Stephen was lazy. Our professors saw it too. They started leaning on him, challenging him. It was getting harder and harder for him to slide. At the end of our sophomore year, we had a course project due, a short story that counted as a large part of our grade. Stephen knew what he was working on wasn’t good. He asked me to help him fix it, so I gave him some ideas, all of which required pulling the story apart. Rather than doing the work, he went into my desk and found a piece I’d written the previous year. He retyped it minus my edit notes and handed it in as his own. He got an A and passed the class. Unfortunately, the professor passed it along to the editor of the Meridian, who ended up printing it. That’s how I found out—when I saw my story in print with his name on it.”

Christy-Lynn went still, numbed by the revelation. “He just . . . stole it?”

“Borrowed was the term he used. He said he just needed to pass the class, and it wasn’t like I was ever going to do anything with the story, so what was the big deal?”

“I can’t even—” She paused, dragging both hands through her hair. “What happened when you told the professor it was your story?”

“Nothing happened. I didn’t tell him.”

Christy-Lynn gaped at him. “I don’t understand. He stole your story and got a publishing credit for it, and you just let him get away with it?”

“It would have been my word against his, and I knew better than to think he’d ever cop to plagiarism. The bastard couldn’t even bring himself to apologize. Suffice it to say, we were through as friends. It wasn’t just that he stole my work and passed it off as his. It was that he could screw over a friend when he knew damn well I was willing to help him.”

“I’m so sorry, Wade.”

“For what?”

“That night at the alumni dinner. I thought it was sour grapes, and all the time you were sitting on this.”

“You called me bitter and jealous.”

“I’m sorry.”

Wade forced a smile. “Forget it. You didn’t know. Besides, you were right. Or at least half-right. I was pretty bitter. But it’s water under the bridge now.”

Christy-Lynn pushed to her feet and crossed to the opposite side of deck, more shaken than she wanted to admit. Who had she married? A man who kept a mistress, who fathered a child he barely saw and had neglected to provide for, who plagiarized a story written by his best friend. It was unfathomable. But really, it wasn’t. And that made it worse somehow.

She didn’t hear Wade leave his chair, but suddenly he was standing beside her, his fingers warm as he reached for her hand on the railing. “You okay?”

Christy-Lynn kept her eyes averted, watching the breeze push a series of ripples across the lake’s silvered surface. “I honestly don’t know. I keep learning things about a man I thought I knew, terrible things. It makes me wonder.”

“Makes you wonder what?”

“How I could live with someone for so long and still not have a clue who he was.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Christy-Lynn had been only too happy to change the subject when Wade suggested they start dinner. He had grilled salmon steaks and skewers of fresh summer vegetables, which she’d helped him prepare. Now, as they sat on the deck, eating strawberry ice cream and watching the sun slip behind the trees, she felt herself finally starting to relax.