Chapter 4: A Friend With Pie

The retraction ran the next morning, on the front page, in a box.

It said the allegations against me were "unfounded," and that the site regretted the error.

It did not say who had told them.

By the time I was twenty weeks along, nobody in Scranton remembered I had ever been anything but Fiorella's granddaughter, the one with the belly.

I was in the deli on a Saturday morning, stacking provolone, when a white car stopped at the curb.

Margot got out with a pastry box and a gift bag with a pale yellow bow.

Nonna saw her through the window.

"Who's that?" she said.

"A friend. She sits on the board."

"The board that called you a thief."

"She's the one who warned me, Nonna. She sent me a text."

Nonna looked at me for a long moment.

Then she picked up a clean knife and began cutting bread, very slowly.

Margot came in with the little bell ringing over her head.

"I'm so sorry to arrive unannounced," she said. "I had to see you with my own eyes."

She hugged me, carefully, around my belly.

"Look at you," she said. "You're glowing."

She had brought lemon cake from a bakery on Madison, and a soft cream blanket in the gift bag, with a tiny stitched star on one corner.

"I found it on Thursday and couldn't resist," she said.

She sat at the little table by the window and told me everything.

The board had been horrified by the story.

Half of them had called Maxim that same afternoon to say they didn't believe it.

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