ELEVEN
Fern slept in the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom that had never been used before. I got a blanket and pillow for Eartha to sleep on the couch. I called Hayword and told him where we were. We decided we wouldn’t tell David, since he had a sleepover. If he called me in the middle of the night and asked where I was, I would decide then what to tell him.
I took a long hot shower. I wanted a drink, I gotta tell ya, but I knew there wasn’t anything in the house. I had downed what was left the night before.
I crawled under the covers and thought about my day. Greg Douglas turned out to be a pervert. Who would have thought? Although I suppose pervert was too strong a word. If consensual adults wanted to humiliate one another—or pretend to—who was I to object? My own daughter called my
