Chapter 7 - The Currency of the Edit
The digital affiliate of the *Today* show was housed in a glass-walled studio on the ground floor of a building on 48th Street, where tourists from Iowa stood outside in the rain with homemade signs, waving at cameras that weren't pointed at them.
It was 7:30 a.m. Monday.
Delaney sat in the green room.
She was wearing an ivory wool turtleneck that had been selected by an image consultant to suggest both vulnerability and high-income domesticity. Her hair was pulled back into a loose, low chignon—the kind of chignon that required forty minutes with a round brush and forty dollars worth of French texturizing spray to look like she had just rolled out of bed after a night of weeping.
Her publicist, a woman named Chloe who wore rectangular acetate frames and carried two iPhones in one hand like a deck of cards, was pacing between the espresso machine and the makeup mirror.
“The segment is five minutes,” Chloe said. “We do two minutes on the wedding. You use the phrase ‘unresolved childhood trauma’ at least twice. Then we bring in Dr. Vance on the monitor from White Plains to talk about ‘sisterly projection.’ You don't use the word *assault*. You use the word *rupture*.”
“Rupture,” Delaney repeated. She was looking at her reflection in the illuminated mirror, checking the tiny dab of clear gloss on her lower lip.
“And if they ask about the video?”
“You say you’re praying for her,” Chloe said. “You say you’re heartbroken that her pain had to spill over onto Hayes’s family, but that your door is always open for restorative dialogue.”
The door opened.
It wasn't the segment producer.
It was Bellamy.
She was wearing her Bronxville coat, the cashmere clean now, the two streaks of my blood having been removed by an artisanal dry cleaner on Madison Avenue who specialized in vintage theatrical costumes.
Behind her came two men in dark suits from the New York State Department of Financial Services, accompanied by a Westchester County detective named Kowalski who had a bad back and an expired parking ticket sticking out of his breast pocket.
Chloe stopped pacing. “Who are you? This is a private green room.”
“I’m the attorney for the minor, Juniper Ward,” Bellamy said.
She laid a certified copy of the temporary restraining order on the vanity table, right between Delaney’s contour palette and her cup of lukewarm oat milk latte.
“And this,” Bellamy added, “is Detective Kowalski. He has a warrant for the seizure of all electronic storage devices, cellular phones, and external recording equipment currently in the possession of Lumen Life LLC, pursuant to an investigation into grand larceny and criminal solicitation.”
Delaney didn't move.
Her reflection stayed perfectly still, the gloss on her lower lip catching the white bulbs of the makeup mirror.
“Where is Hayes?” she asked.
“Hayes is in a conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of the William Morris Endeavor building,” Bellamy said. “He’s currently explaining to three senior vice presidents why his name shouldn't be listed on the police report as an unindicted co-conspirator.”
Delaney turned around slowly.
The chignon held. The Vera Wang turtleneck held. But the skin around her eyes—the skin that had been preserved with three-thousand-dollar micro-current treatments since she was twenty-two—looked suddenly gray, the texture of unbaked dough.
“Sloan did this,” she whispered.
“You did this, Delaney,” Bellamy said. “You did it when you ordered three yards of cattle fence from Brewster and told your brother it was for hydrangeas.”
The segment producer, a twenty-five-year-old with a clipboard and an earpiece that was chirping like a distressed cricket, stuck his head into the room.
“Delaney? We’re thirty seconds to tease. The anchor wants to know if we can do the full five minutes without the White Plains remote—Dr. Vance’s office just canceled their line.”
Delaney looked at Detective Kowalski.
Kowalski took a pair of Smith & Wesson handcuffs out of his coat pocket and set them on the vanity table.
Not with a slam.
Gently.
The steel links made a tiny, musical *chink* against the glass.
May you like
“Tell them,” Delaney said, her voice dropping into that small, flat register she had used when she was eleven years old, standing over the storm drain in Rye, “that the bride has a prior engagement.”
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