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something?”
    He stopped and looked at her seriously. She started to take another drag on the cigarette, then changed her mind, waiting.
    Geoffery said, “There’s never been a publisher in the history of the world who rejected a book because it was based on a tried and true formula.  Why did they really turn down the second book?”
    Bobbie dropped the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her boot.  She returned a steady gaze to him. “It’s you, Geoffery,” she said.  “Your writing.  They thought it felt like you were phoning it in, rehashing old stuff.  What made the first book so powerful was the way you told it, the way you convinced us, the way you, I don’t know, cared .  Hell, you almost had me converting once or twice.”  She tried for a smile and failed.  “But when Liz died,” she went on, “I saw something go out of you.  I kept expecting it to come back, but it never did. So the truth is … maybe this isn’t your genre anymore.  Things change, you know?”
    For a long moment, he didn’t reply.  And then he said, quietly, “Yeah.  I know.”
    They walked back to the shuttle without speaking.

 
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
    Ladybugs and Angel Cakes
     
     
    P aul and Derrick’s friendship with Bridget, Cici and Lindsay dated back to the time they had all lived on Huntington Lane, a tony neighborhood in the suburbs of Baltimore. Between the five of them, they’d practically run the Homeowner’s Association, the Gardens and Beautification Committee, and the Thursday Night Supper Club.  They’d gone to the theater together, taken the train into Washington for shopping trips and gallery openings together, and every autumn they made a sojourn into the country to pick apples together.  At least the ladies picked apples; Paul and Derrick preferred to have their baskets filled by professionals and waiting for them at the gift shop at the end of the day.  They took turns trying to outdo each other by giving the best parties in town, and they always celebrated Christmas together.
    Paul and Derrick had been at first appalled, then secretly envious, when the three ladies decided to abandon suburbia, consolidate their resources, and buy an old mansion in the Shenandoah Valley together. They’d called the place Ladybug Farm, and spent the next year refurbishing the interior, restoring gardens and shoring up outbuildings.  By the time Paul and Derrick made their own move to the country several years later, the ladies had even revitalized the vineyard and had begun operating a winery.  Cici’s daughter Lori had married Bridget’s son Kevin, and the two of them had moved into the big old house. Lindsay had adopted a teenage boy, Noah, who was now a Marine stationed in Washington, DC, and had married Dominic Duponcier, the vineyard manager.  What had begun as a simple house restoration had turned into a big, colorful, noisy, mismatched family.
    Ladybug Farm was twenty minutes down the highway from the Hummingbird House, and Paul and Derrick visited often—most often, as they both were painfully aware, when they needed help of some sort.  Their friends were generous with their advice and their time, not to mention their homemade cookies and pies, and the two men tried very hard not to take advantage of them.  But somehow they always suspected they were.  This time, at least, they had each had the presence of mind to grab a poinsettia from one of the boxes on the back porch, hoping that might make this seem like more of a social call than yet another imposition upon the ladies’ collective good nature.
    The Ladybug Farm sign at the end of the drive was already decorated with red bows and bright holly bouquets, and someone had festooned the winery sign with cedar swags and more red bows. The drive that led to the winery was lined on either side by quaint split-rail fences, and these, too, were lushly adorned with the bounty of nature—cedar boughs and pine cones—accented by more red