Page 95 of Good Girls Lie

A fight. A hug. A kiss. A farewell wave.

Ford shuts her eyes against what she already fears. The father of Camille’s baby must have been Rumi.

More photos are loading. Her heart begins to pound.

This is her front door. Rumi is stepping in, and there’s a flash of white she knows is her thigh.

The glint of glass.

A smile.

The door closing behind him.

Had he come from Camille’s arms straight to Ford’s bed?

She remembers the night perfectly. He’d shown up in silence, taken her against the wall. She’d assumed it was lust, but now she wonders if it was simply frustration that his younger paramour had turned him away.

Someone has seen them. She doesn’t know what she’s more frightened about, that her illicit affair will be revealed, or the much darker thought—Rumi knew Camille.

Rumi was having an affair with Camille.

It isn’t a leap for her mind to ask,Did Camille kill herself because Rumi rejected her for Ford?

Worse is the next thought, even darker, more disturbing.

Did Rumi kill Camille to shut her up?

Every conceivable curse word she knows runs through her mind, followed by a single, edifying thought.

Who sent this?

Ford is not a computer genius but she isn’t a Luddite, either. The email address is gibberish, but she clicks “More Information” in the header and a series of commands spill onto the page. This, though, is unintelligible. Letters and numbers that make no sense.

There is someone on campus who can decipher it for her. Can she trust him to keep his mouth shut?

She prints out the header, wonders what to do with the photos. Should she delete the email entirely? She can’t let it sit in her school mailbox; Melanie could stumble upon it. But if she deletes it, is she hampering the investigation? And if she deletes it, what’s to say it won’t simply be resent? Or sent outside the school. To the parents. To the board. To the press.

Now she’s in a real quandary. She’s complicit regardless of the next steps she takes.

The crisis management lawyers she talked with this morning had been very clear. There are three ways to respond to a crisis. Yes, I did it, who cares? Yes, I did it, and I’m sorry. No, I didn’t do it, prove it.

Prove itwon’t work—there’s photographic evidence, which means the originals are out there. There’s no way to pretend she didn’t receive the email—somewhere, a server has registered she’s opened it. There’s no way to saywho cares, either. Everyone will care.

Her mother’s voice launches at full speed from the back of her mind.How stupid could you be, having sex with a child?

He’s not a child. He’s twenty. He’s a man. He can vote. He can fight. He can pull a trigger.

Yes, Ford, but how long has this been going on?

That answer, if given honestly, is what will get her thrown out on her ear. Or perhaps put in jail.

Maybe there’s a fourth crisis management response. Run like hell. But this isn’t an option for her. Not really.

Her choices are quite limited.

Expose herself.

Expose Rumi.