Chapter 20: The Column

"Thea," Celia said, with both hands pressed to her chest. "Oh, you're hurt. I'm so sorry, I had no idea you would be here."

Harrison stood up from the pavement with salt on both knees.

"Who is that?" he said, looking at the man in the gray jacket.

"A writer. He asked to talk to me about Caleb." Her eyes were wide and wet. "I didn't know it would be today."

The man had already taken four photographs.

One of them showed Harrison on his knees in the salt, holding the ankle of a woman he had divorced that morning.

"Delete those," Harrison said.

"Harrison," I said. "Leave it."

I set my foot down on the ice and straightened up.

"Ms. Sedgwick," the man said. "Is it true you kept a seven-figure trust and the Back Bay apartment?"

"Yes."

"And you turned down the family necklace in front of a board?"

"I gave it back twice," I said. "Ask the two hundred people who watched me do it the first time."

He wrote it down.

I knew as he did it that he would use the first half of the sentence and lose the second.

The column ran on Monday, under a photograph of Harrison kneeling on the pavement.

The headline was THE WIFE WHO TOOK THE TRUST.

Eileen slapped it on the pharmacy counter at seven-thirty, with her coffee in the other hand.

"Read the last paragraph," she said. "The quote from a friend of the family."

I read it.

She's a lovely woman, and I only hope she's happy. I never wanted to be the reason for any of this.

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