Ten minutes later I called Nora. I did not want her to hear it secondhand at her son's school or from a customer who had mistaken gossip for concern. She went silent when I told her, then asked whether Colin had mentioned it to me directly. He had not. Nora said he had accused her the night before of using his wrongdoing as an excuse to meet someone new.
"He told me I'm making him look like the only person who crossed a line," she said. "As though leaving that hotel with you means we did the same thing they did in the room."
"We didn't."
"I know." She took a breath. "But Oliver's friends have parents who work in this city. Things get around. I'm afraid he'll hear something I haven't prepared him to understand."
We decided not to confront people over rumors or publish any hotel details online. Nora would tell Oliver, in language he could understand, that she had met someone who had been hurt by the same situation and that speaking to him did not mean she had begun a new relationship. I would keep Rebecca informed if the rumor crossed into something that could affect legal negotiations. Both of us knew the hardest part was that we could not make every stranger tell the truth.
When I hung up, I went to work on a Sunday project I had been avoiding. A small church in West Philadelphia had hired us to repair the stone steps outside its community hall, and a rain delay had left us behind schedule. The foreman had offered to handle it himself, but I needed to move, measure, and solve something whose problems obeyed physical rules. I spent three hours checking the base beneath the lower steps while a cold wind cut through my gloves.
Malik found me there near dusk. He stood at the top of the steps holding two coffees, looked at the work I'd done, and shook his head. "You keep this up, you'll start making the crew nervous. Bosses don't usually work this hard unless somebody's about to get laid off."
I accepted the coffee. We sat on the unfinished steps while traffic moved past and the church's caretaker shut off the lights inside. I told Malik about the rumor. He listened, then said something I would remember for a long time.
"People who don't want to explain what they did will sometimes spend more energy explaining what you supposedly did instead. You can't stop every story. You can make sure you don't become the person they say you are."
I wanted a more satisfying answer. I wanted him to tell me there was a way to force the truth into every conversation, a way to remove the stain of other people's speculation. But Malik had never been interested in giving me what I wanted to hear when he could give me something useful. I drank my coffee and asked him whether he thought our lower step needed another stone anchor.