Chapter 10: Soon-to-Be Ex-Husband

By morning, the headline was on every phone in Sleridge.

HEIRESS REFUSES TO SAVE DYING WOMAN.

Underneath was a photograph of Leigh in the ballroom, with her chin raised and her mouth set.

Someone had cropped it so she looked cold.

Forty reporters were camped outside the iron gates of the Aldrich house by eight.

Conroy stood at the upstairs window with his arms crossed.

"I'll throw them in the harbor," he said.

"You will not," Howard said, from his chair.

Leigh read the article twice at the breakfast table.

It quoted a hospital source, a family friend, and "a person close to Ms. Whitby."

None of them were named.

"Talia leaked it herself," Leigh said. "Before she even fainted."

"Can you prove that?" the lawyer asked.

"Not yet."

"Then the city thinks you're a murderer until you can."

Leigh put down the paper.

"Then I'll talk to them," she said.

Conroy turned from the window. "That's what they want."

"It's what they expect," Leigh said. "It's not the same."

She walked down the drive in a gray dress, alone, and opened the gate herself.

Forty microphones came up.

"Ms. Aldrich, did you refuse to donate a kidney?"

"Yes," she said.

The shouting stopped for half a second, because no one had expected the answer to be so plain.

"My husband asked me for a kidney on the day Ms. Whitby fell ill. I said no, and I will not apologize for it."

"Why?" someone shouted.

"Because I have not seen one document proving she needs it."

She let that settle.

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