Chapter 9: Deleted Posts

The videos reached the internet on a Tuesday, three days after the thirty days ended.

Ingrid told me by pushing her phone across the Somerville kitchen table at seven in the morning.

She had slept on my sofa since the lobby, and she was still in yesterday's cardigan.

"Don't blame me," she said. "I didn't post them."

I watched the screen.

It was the anniversary film from the lobby, with Preston on the stage in the signet ring, saying thank you to his wife.

Under it someone had posted the clip from the living room, with the photograph wall behind me and the cards in her friends' handwriting.

Under that came the bets, the livestreams from the last three years and the dinner where Beatrice called Preston her son-in-law.

Someone had matched all of it by date and laid it out in a single thread.

It had four million views.

"The comments are not on your side," Ingrid said, and put her glasses on. "They're not on theirs, either."

I scrolled.

Why did she keep doing this to him?

Imagine making your husband watch another man in his chair as a love test.

She made him sign the papers on camera and the friends laughed at him.

I closed the thread.

My phone had thirty-one messages, and I read the first line of each.

Most were from names I knew.

Please tell people it was a joke.

We never meant it like that, Elias.

Can we talk? Can you put something out saying it was all in fun?

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