Chapter 13: Goodbye, Elliot

"Well. Good thing she's dead."

Judith's voice rolled out of the speakers on both sides of the altar.

It was warm, and clear, and a hundred people heard it.

Nobody moved.

Judith stood in the front row with her mouth open.

On the recording, Courtney laughed.

"It would have been nicer if she'd just moved to Arizona."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"Turn that off," Judith said. She said it again, louder. "Turn it off!"

She came down the aisle with her pearls swinging.

The man in the headset looked at Mom, and Mom shook her head, and he folded his arms.

Dale stepped into the aisle and Judith stopped an inch from his chest.

"You paid me five hundred dollars once," he said. "I'd like you to hear the rest."

"I told Elliot she cheated," Judith's voice said. "Best money I ever spent."

A man in the third row said, "Good God."

Elliot had not moved from the middle of the aisle.

He was staring at the speaker above the arch, and I watched the words go into him one at a time.

"The picture of her friend's truck, that was mine," Courtney said from the speakers. "And the email about the clinic."

"He cried for two days after that email."

"I know. I held his phone."

Elliot's shoulders flinched at that line.

At the altar, Courtney shook her head.

"It's fake," she said. "It's AI. They can make anyone say anything."

"Babe, you know me. It's fake."

"I slapped her," her own voice said. "I wanted him to see the mark."

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