Chapter 14: Reading the Invoice

"Libby," Dalton said, as warm as a man reading a toast. "We were hoping you'd be home."

"You found Bev's address."

"I'm sorry about that. It's on your hospital emergency form."

Bev tapped the spoon against her palm.

"It's on a form in a locked drawer," she said. "Somebody's going to have a conversation about that."

The woman with the boom stepped forward and held out her hand.

"I produce Fair Trade," she said. "It's a podcast about money and relationships. Two million listeners."

"I know what it is."

"Dalton's episode did our biggest week ever. We'd like yours. Live, tonight, in our studio. You get a microphone and as long as you want."

Dalton nodded along.

"It'll clear the air," he said. "People are saying cruel things about you, Lib. This is how you set the record straight."

I looked at him.

He believed it.

He believed that if I sat across a table from him with the red light on, I would be soft in front of two million strangers.

"Live," I said. "No edits. My own mic, and nobody cuts me off."

"Of course," the producer said, too fast.

"I'm bringing Bev."

"Honey," Bev said, "I've been waiting since dinner."

The studio was a padded room in a converted warehouse, with four microphones on a round table and a window full of people holding coffee.

The host was a calm man in a gray hoodie who introduced himself with a first name I forgot at once.

He asked Dalton for his side.

Dalton gave it beautifully.

He said he had been a lonely contractor who took a strange job, and that the job had turned into the truest thing in his life.

He said I came from a cold family and had never been loved properly, so I had trouble believing it when someone did.

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