There is a strange mercy in a moment like that.

Through those four days I had carried the weight of what I knew mostly alone, in the dark, in secret, wondering if I was overreacting, if there was some innocent explanation, if I was the one making too much of things.

And here was Julian, in the middle of his own gala, taking every ounce of that doubt off my shoulders, choosing his mistress over his family in front of the only audience whose judgment he had ever cared about.

He had told me it wasn’t worth my trouble to come.