I stopped reading comments after the second day. Not because I believed the comments were unfair, but because I began to notice that each one was giving me another opportunity to focus on what strangers thought instead of what I had actually done. My appetite for an audience had not disappeared just because the audience disapproved. I needed to stop feeding it.
A few people contacted Copper & Bloom asking whether we were still a reliable vendor. Two clients postponed upcoming bookings. One nonprofit director, a woman named Anita Bell who had worked with us for years, asked if she could speak to me privately. I was terrified she would cancel a major event we had planned for December, but I agreed to meet because pretending I had a scheduling conflict would have been another version of running away.
Anita sat across from me in our small conference room and said she'd seen the video. She wasn't there to ask about the private details of my marriage, and she didn't believe anyone should be sentenced forever by a clip from a bad night. What concerned her was the business access I'd granted to a consultant whose judgment was now in question. She wanted assurances that donor information and deposits were protected.
I told her an independent review was underway and that she would receive written findings relating to her account. She studied me for a moment and then said, "I appreciate that answer. I don't need you to be a perfect person. I need you to keep the promises we made to the families attending that fundraiser."
After she left, I stood by the conference-room window and watched traffic moving along the street. I had once believed that being respected meant being admired by important people. Anita had offered me a less glamorous standard: do what you said you would do, especially when something has gone wrong. It was exactly the standard Ethan had lived by at the studio, and I had dismissed it as unimaginative.
The independent review found that Ryan's firm had been given access to booking calendars, certain client-facing event records, and limited financial projections. It did not establish that personal banking information had been taken, which was a relief, but it confirmed that the permissions had been broader than necessary. Jenna and I revoked the access, reset the relevant credentials, and documented the changes. We notified the clients whose information had been included in the affected project folders, rather than waiting for them to hear about it from somebody else.
The letters were humiliating to sign. Each began with a sentence that admitted we'd made an error in judgment and were taking steps to ensure it would not happen again. More than once I stared at the phrase error in judgment and wondered whether it concealed too much. I asked Priya to review the wording, and she told me that clarity was not the same as public self-punishment. The letters needed to be accurate, complete, and useful to the people receiving them.