When My Ex-Husband Brought His Young Mistress to Our Son’s Pool Party to Humiliate Me, I Introduced Everyone to My Handsome New “Boyfriend” — He Laughed and Called It Pathetic, Certain I’d Hired an Actor, Until the Man Opened a Small Case and Said One Sentence That Drained the Color From His Face

Fine.

I would give him one.

I asked Daniel if he would come with me — not as my auditor, but appearing, for one afternoon, as something else entirely.

He understood immediately.

And so I let it be known, in advance, through the neighborhood grapevine that carried everything, that I would be bringing a new man to the party.

A boyfriend.

Let Luke hear that.

Let him arrive already primed to sneer at whatever pathetic figure I’d managed to find.