“Our legal ties are over, and so is everything else between us.”

Lauren let her hand fall to her side and swallowed hard.

She looked past me at the front glass doors, where two local newspaper reporters were coming up the granite steps with cameras around their necks.

“Claire, please,” Lauren whispered to me.

“Don’t call my house again,” I said, my voice even and quiet in the big marble hall.

She turned without a word and headed for the stairwell door, her heels clicking fast on the terrazzo until the heavy metal door swung shut behind her.

Evelyn came up next to me holding three gold-stamped copies of the judge’s freeze order.