Chapter 7: The Lots

The story hit the internet at dawn.

CEO's Ex-Wife Grew Up in a Trailer Park. Was She Ever Anything But a Gold Digger?

It came with a photo of the old gate at Pinecrest Mobile Park and a blurry picture of Dani at nineteen, wearing a diner uniform.

By nine o'clock, three camera trucks were parked outside her mother's trailer.

Dani saw them from the car and gripped the seat.

Glenn, in the driver's seat, said a word that made the beanie in the back cover his ears.

"I'll turn around," he said.

"No."

"Dani, they're going to eat you alive."

"They already ate me once," she said. "I'm not hungry."

She got out.

A wall of microphones rose in front of her.

"Ms. Kehoe! Did you marry Preston Halloway for his money?"

"Is it true you grew up without electricity?"

"Ms. Kehoe, did you grow up here?"

Dani opened her mouth.

Then she saw the neighbors.

They had come out of their trailers in a slow, quiet line, men in work boots, women in robes, a teenager holding a baby.

The old man from lot fourteen rolled his oxygen tank down the gravel and parked it next to her.

The two sisters from the double-wide stood on her other side with their arms folded.

Somebody's grandmother was holding a rolling pin.

Nobody said a word.

They just stood there and looked at the cameras.

The microphones drew back an inch.

The screen door of the small blue trailer banged open.

Dani's mother came down the three metal steps in her housecoat, with her hair in a clip and a spatula in her hand.