He was a quiet, methodical man, and he had simply taken the memory card to a forensic accountant and a divorce attorney, and what they found went far, far beyond a single encounter behind a cabana.

Over a period of four years, Gwen had siphoned nearly eighty thousand dollars from their shared accounts, manipulated receipts, and used stolen family details to open secret lines of credit.

Her obsession with curating a flawless, enviable life online had been, all along, a frantic smoke screen thrown up over a mountain of debt and a deep personal emptiness.

When the divorce was finalized, she received no alimony, no share of Mark’s business, no safety net at all.

And the online friends she had claimed, that night at my dinner table, to be protecting Maya from, evaporated the instant the lavish trips and the sponsored-looking posts stopped.