“It’s the diffusion of light through raindrops,” Alaina said flatly, crossing her arms in front of her.

Bryan looked up from fiddling with the camera to frown at her, his strong jaw jutting forward aggressively. “Rainbows have lots of magic in them,” he said, dead serious. “Ask any leprechaun. It’d do you some good to believe in magic, Alaina.”

Alaina’s lush mouth turned down at the corners. “Take the picture, Hennessy.”

Bryan ignored her, his wise, warm blue eyes taking on a dreamy quality as he gazed up at the soft stripes of color. “We’ll each be chasing our own rainbows after today. I wonder where they’ll lead us.”

They each recited the stock answers they’d been giving faculty, friends, and family for months. Alaina was headed to law school. Jayne was leaving to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood as a writer and director. Bryan had been accepted into the graduate program of parapsychology at Purdue. Faith was headed to a managerial position in a business office in Cincinnati.

“That’s where our brains are taking us,” Bryan said, pulling his cap off to comb a hand back through his hair as he always did when he went into one of his “deep-thinking modes.” “I wonder where our hearts would take us.”

If anyone knew the answer to that, it was Bryan, Faith thought. He was the one they told all their secret dreams to. He was the one she had confided in that she aspired to nothing more than having a husband and children and a small business to run. That was the end of her heart’s rainbow.

It probably would have seemed an exceedingly boring dream to Jayne and Alaina. Faith herself admitted it lacked pizzazz and had nothing in the way of driving ambition, but Bryan had assured her it was a wonderful dream.

“That’s the question we should all be asking ourselves,” Jayne said, wagging a slender finger at her friends. “Are we in pursuit of our true bliss, or are we merely following a course charted by the expectations of others?”