“Hiring Mr. Weaver here is all well and good, but maybe what we really need is one of those PR consultants.”

“A what?” asked Bob.

“You know, a public relations person. Someone who could get out our side of the story. How Jeremy—and by extension, all of us—is a victim too. I mean, the judge made his ruling and that should be the end of it, but here we are being tortured on social media. Being threatened, having our reputations dragged through the mud.”

Bob actually appeared intrigued. “So what would a PR person actually do?”

“She—and I would want it to be a woman, because they’re much better at this sort of thing—would get in touch with the media and make sure some sympathetic stories are written. She’d know the right people to approach, who’d be on our side. Get them to sit down with Jeremy, interview him, see what a decent boy he actually is, not that cartoon big baby they made him out to be through the trial.”

“You know anyone like that?” Bob asked her.

Gloria shook her head. “Madeline might.”

I had my doubts Madeline Plimpton would be on board with this, but in the little time I had spent with these people, I supposed anything was possible.

Bob left the room, shaking his head.

Gloria put the question to me. “Do you know anyone like that, Mr. Weaver?”

“No.”

She frowned. I was becoming a disappointment to her. A fried phone and now this. Here I’d been trying to persuade Jeremy’s mother to stop all her interactions with the world, and now here she was trying to get her son on the Today show.

“Maybe it’s not such a great idea after all,” she said.

I decided to venture an opinion. “The more attention you bring to your situation, the longer the harassment will continue. Things’ll die down eventually.”

Gloria studied me. “Maybe you’re right. When you’re in the middle of something, you want to make it end as fast as you can, but everything you do may just prolong it.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“I’m sure my aunt had you all checked out, Mr. Weaver. But I don’t know much about you. Are you married? Do you have children?”

“I was,” I said. “And I had a son.”

A glint in her eye told me she’d caught onto the past-tense phrasing, certainly where my son was concerned. “Had?” she said.

“It’s a long story.”

She smiled. “Have you ever heard anyone say it’s a short story?”

I smiled back. “I guess not.”

“I’m guessing it’s not a long, happy story.”

“You’d be right about that,” I said.

“You think you’re the only one with troubles,” Gloria said, “and then you realize you’re surrounded by everybody else’s heartbreak.”