“Hey, I went to high school with this woman!” Daniele Stephens posted several months back, along with the Forbes article detailing their guesstimates about Clare’s current net worth. The picture the article had used was of Clare at one of her book signings, a long line of readers stretched away from the table where she sat, pen poised over an open copy of Would I Lie to You?, smiling up at the elderly man waiting for his autographed copy.

Not that she really cared about impressing her old high school friends. Well, that wasn’t completely true. At first she had, in those early years when fame and success were still new, still fun. Now she really just liked looking at people’s family pictures, seeing how they had changed, and sometimes, like now, pulling up Kaylee Collins-Hensel’s profile and seeing if she’d made it public yet. Clare had always been too afraid, even hiding behind her Sara Smith mask, to send a Friend Request to Kaylee.

She always worried that Kaylee would see right through her Sara disguise.

Even if Kaylee didn’t suspect Sara was really Clare, what would she maybe have posted about Clare over the years? Clare had obviously taken Adam’s last name, and Kaylee would know that, but what did she think about it?

She stared at the photo she kept always on her desk, the four-by-six snapshot now almost twenty years old, in a thin silver frame to the right of her monitor—Adam and Clare. It was her eighteenth birthday, right before Adam had given her a tiny chip diamond ring. The ring had been a secret from everyone, everyone except his twin sister, Kaylee, who had helped him pick it out.

Next to the frame, in a small two-drawer lavender velvet box, Clare kept a few of her most precious items. She pulled the dark purple tassel hanging from the handle and opened the top drawer. Inside, all the way at the back, she found the small white ring box she kept hidden, took it out, and placed it on the desk in front of her. She slid off the four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring and matching wedding band Simon had bought her six years ago, with money he’d earned off her books, and placed them in the shallow dish next to her keyboard.

With careful fingers, just like she’d done that day, Clare pried open the box to reveal the tiny chip of a diamond, held in place by four thin silver prongs, on a delicate gold band. She pulled it from the black fabric-covered sponge holding it in place and slipped it on her finger. Adam had shoveled driveways all winter through their senior year to afford it before their graduation in May.