“I didn’t put anything shameful on that screen,” I said.

“I put his own words and his own numbers, the things he’d done and hidden.

If that was cruel, the cruelty was his; I only stopped keeping it secret for him.

For eight years I protected this family from every ugly truth about their golden boy — smoothed every edge, absorbed every insult so the evening would stay pleasant.

That night I simply stopped doing his public relations.

There’s a difference between exposing someone and refusing to keep covering for them, and I’d spent so long doing the second that I’d forgotten I was allowed to stop.” My friend was quiet a moment, then raised her glass, and I understood she’d been asking the question about her own life as much as mine.