Right under the photo was a comment from Rory’s personal account, posted less than half an hour earlier.

“Beautiful girl.

So proud,” he’d written, followed by three red hearts.

My thumb went still against my finger.

The air in my lungs felt thick, heavy and cold, like breathing in wet snow.

The lie he’d told Sadie over the speakerphone while she sat at our kitchen table eating chili lay right there on my screen, smashed to pieces by six hundred dollars’ worth of satin and silver thread.

He had sat in our living room, handed his daughter a twenty-dollar bill like a tip for a waitress, promised her shoes he never meant to buy, and then driven straight to Sioux Falls to pay for his stepdaughter’s royal treatment.