Lorraine didn’t look up. “I don’t think so, Marianne. I think the die is cast, as they say. This happening is happening.”

“I told Janine there wouldn’t be press.”

“I’m sure she’s seen the cameras,” Lorraine remarked. “Janine will be fine. She’s tough. Tougher than you were.”

“Where is she?”

“Up front,” said Lorraine, marking through someone’s poem with a fat X. “We had a cigarette. She’ll be fine.”

Marianne stood and scanned the front row, where she saw Janine’s familiar mousy brown bob bent over some papers. A pretty young woman rubbed her back. Davonte was doing squats.

Regina strode down the aisle in a pink flash. “There’s your friend,” said Lorraine. “Better take your seat.”

“Welcome, everyone, and thank you—so very much—for your support,” Regina began, her voice quiet and halting. “As you know, we have faced enormous criticism of the work that we do here.” She gripped the sides of the podium. “Important work, but frightening, threatening to some people.”

Marianne looked around her, expecting to see people rolling their eyes, or at least looking away from the phony, almost tearful Regina, but the audience watched her expectantly. She paused for a long moment before going on.

“That’s why I’m so happy and so grateful to see you all here at the Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch, a partner campus of God’s World God’s Word,” she said, appearing to blink the tears away. “And I’m so very thrilled that many of you will be joining us in online classes and seminars. But I want to first recognize the students who have been inspired by the school since March! Please stand!”

The Ranch’s students stood and waved sheepishly, while everyone clapped. Please do not recognize the teachers, Marianne silently commanded. Do not.

“And the teachers!” Regina said. “Oh, they are so modest, they won’t even stand. But I want to recognize”—here she looked at her list—“Eric Osborne, novelist; Tom Marshall, memoirist and journalist; and Lorraine Kominski, poet.”

Relieved to be forgotten, Marianne leaned back as Regina introduced Davonte as a reformed, world-renowned star and novelist. He read a short scene in which his protagonist, Damian Silver, convinces a woman not to abort his child, and even choked himself up a little, by the end. He sat down to generous applause.

Janine received a longer, even more effusive introduction from Regina Somers. “Just think!” she said. “A year ago, Janine Gray had not shown her work to anyone outside her family. Now her work has been read by thousands of people!”