I spent the entire morning in the gallery, streaming microinterviews with museumgoers and uploading crowd shots. After spending so many weeks virtually alone with Rosalind, I felt oddly protective of her. When I overheard someone dismissively say “that fame-hungry bitch deserved what she got,” rage clouded my vision and I wanted to stomp over and demand they show some respect. I took a deep breath, restrained myself, and instead cheerfully suggested they check out the accompanying video from the artist—in which Irina Venn discussed how easy it was to blame ambitious women for their own demise, and how that was something she hoped to confront in the exhibit.

That misogynist was the outlier; almost everyone else who walked through the gallery seemed to understand the gravity of the dioramas before them. Some were affected by it more than others. I watched as one woman with long, silky black hair stared into the final glass case, in which Rosalind’s small body lay dismembered. She had been frozen in place for several minutes wearing an expression of muted horror, and as I watched a tear well in her eye and her lips press into a thin line, I suddenly understood: this hit too close to home for her.

I was about to approach her when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I stiffened. Brandon, the so-called president of my fan club and Senator Potts’s son, had been skulking around the gallery earlier, giving me his usual dead-eyed grin from underneath his hat. I prepared a fake smile befitting a major donor and spun around.

The smile dropped from my face when I saw it was Lawrence, wearing his orange shirt and an irritatingly casual smile.

“Amazing turnout, huh?”

I gritted my teeth so hard they squeaked. Since the preview two weeks ago, my surprise and disgust with Lawrence’s behavior had simmered and concentrated until it was thick, viscous rage. His appearance at Lena’s birthday party had only further cemented my anger. I was furious with him for cornering me like that and furious with him for trying to laugh it off like it was just a joke, and I was furious with myself for not reporting him. I knew that if it had happened to a friend, I would be shocked they hadn’t called their boss immediately and had not relented until the aggressor had faced consequences. But it hadn’t happened to a friend; it had happened to me, and I was all too aware that Lawrence had been working at the museum for years, while I was just a newly hired, underqualified Instagrammer angling for a promotion she didn’t deserve. I didn’t want to hold him accountable at the expense of my own career.

He squinted at me. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” I said tersely.

“Are you sure?” he asked, reaching out to touch my arm.

His fingertips grazed my skin, and my vision tilted as I remembered the way he’d laid his hands on me that night. I snatched my arm away and growled, “Keep that hand to yourself if you want to keep it at all.”