That, I think, is the truest verdict a life like Stephanie’s ever receives — not the courtroom, but the speed with which the people you sold your soul to impress forget your name once you can no longer impress them.

I did not gloat over Stephanie’s fall, though I will not pretend I mourned it either.

What I felt, watching it happen from a distance over those weeks, was closer to a grim recognition — the sense of watching a lesson I had spent my own life learning play out, in fast and merciless motion, in another woman.

Stephanie had wanted one thing above all others, wanted it so badly she had forged a signature and committed a felony to keep feeding it, and that thing was the approval of a certain glittering set of people.

She had bent her whole life into the shape that would win it.