Chapter 16: Since Tonight

I put Bev on speaker and laid the phone on my mother's table between the pad see ew and Lowell's elbow.

"It's on his account," Bev said. "Public, with a photo from your wedding. It's been up an hour and it has four thousand shares."

I opened it on the laptop.

The photo showed me at twenty-six, in the church doorway, smiling at the man holding my hand.

Under it, Curtis had written a post as long as a letter.

It said his wife of twenty years had abandoned him in his hour of triumph.

It said I had drained a charity's money to fund a vendetta.

It said I was now living openly with his own chief of staff, and that he prayed for me.

"He prayed for me," I said.

Lowell leaned over my shoulder and read it through to the end.

His jaw moved once.

"He didn't use my name," he said. "He wrote 'a senior hospital officer.' Everyone in Milwaukee will know who that is by breakfast."

"I've known you for six weeks."

"I know. I'm suddenly very pleased with how that sounds."

The comments were already coming in.

Some of them were kind.

Many of them said the word gold digger, and one said I should be ashamed.

Bev made a noise on the speaker like a kettle.

"I'm going to answer it," she said. "As the company."

"Don't," I said. "Not yet. Let me sit with it ten minutes."

"Ten minutes is a long time on the internet."

"Ten minutes," I said, and hung up.

I sat with my hands in my lap and looked at the wedding photo.

The woman in the doorway did not know what she was holding.

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