Chapter 13: What Tara Posted

By six o'clock that evening, a million strangers had watched me scream at a widow.

I had never screamed at anyone.

The receptionist found me on the mezzanine with her phone held out in both hands.

"It's everywhere," she said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know whether to show you."

I took the phone.

Tara had posted it at noon, while I was still washing the taste of the breakfast room out of my mouth.

It was last Monday's scene in the studio lobby, filmed from just behind Clark's shoulder.

She had cut it down to a few seconds of each worst moment.

It started with Clark holding roses and saying, "Baby, please."

Then it jumped to my face, mid-sentence, with the sound turned up and my voice cracking sharp.

"Sign it."

Then Ollie, crying in the doorway, clutching something at his neck.

Then Rafe, stepping up at my shoulder, and a cut that made his arm look as if it swung at Clark's chest.

Rafe had never touched him.

She had cropped out his hands, which had stayed in his pockets the whole time.

Tara had laid soft piano music over all of it.

The caption said: My friend Willa abandoned her husband in his worst grief. She won't even let a little boy say goodbye. Please pray for this family.

I scrolled down.

Two hundred thousand likes.

The comments had already found my name, my employer and my face.

Cold witch.

Imagine leaving a man when he's crying over the baby.

Somebody had tagged the studio.

My hands didn't shake.

I was too busy admiring how neatly she had done it.

Tara had not said one false word in her own voice.

She had only cut out the seven days before, and let strangers supply the rest.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

Clark: I didn't know she was going to post that. I'm telling her to take it down.

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