When they both stopped shaking, Abigail breathed into Lucy’s hair. “We don’t talk. We never have. But we need to start.” She pushed herself back. “I want to start.” Her lower lip disappeared into her mouth. “But, Lucy, I need to know . . . did he . . . did something happen?”

New tears trickled down Lucy’s cheeks as she shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“I may not have told you before, but I would now. Because I didn’t understand—before this, I didn’t get it. You’ve dealt with this your whole career, haven’t you?”

“Dealt with what?”

Lucy watched as behind her mother, Delia’s parents rushed to her, bringing Danny with them. He collided with Maddie with the force of a bulldozer.

Emma had Sadie beside her. Lucy caught Emma’s eye and tipped her head toward the exit. She and her mom then moved from the auditorium to the benches outside, and as they sat, facing each other, Lucy told her mom everything. It was the first time she’d ever seen her mom simultaneously cry, threaten a lawsuit, and wonder how much a hitman cost.

She was kidding on that last one.

Lucy hoped.

(Only a little.)

“I’ve underestimated you, Lucy,” her mom finally said. “Putting this all out there for the world to read. I’d have never done it at your age. Or my age.”

Lucy fixed her gaze on her fingernails, coated in Girl em-Power-ed mauve. “Because of what everyone will think of me. That it’s my fault.”

“No, Lucy, don’t you even think—”

“I don’t. Not now. But I did. At first. You always said how important it was to present myself a certain way and now this . . . it defines me.”

“Only for them. And maybe that’s a good thing.” Abigail clasped her hands in her lap. “It shows you’re the kind of woman who won’t put up with bullshit. All I could think of were the repercussions for speaking out at the Women in Tech talk, but what I’ve put up with, Lucy . . . what I’ve donned a smile as fake as all the VCs in this place combined and sat back and allowed to happen, be it jokes about colleague’s breasts, or the ‘oopsy’ brushing of them, or listening to the sports reports on the radio so I could have something to contribute to the conversation at lunch . . . or pretending I was as happy to be working late and missing putting my child to bed as they were.”

Lucy looked at her, surprised.

“I never was—happy, that is. But to show it was to be weak in the eyes of people I put too much stock in. At the expense of the one person whose stock mattered most.”