Chapter 17 Daisy #3
The uncropped photo shows context the viral version didn't: a customer paying for books at The Margin’s counter, Kendra beside him. In the cropped version, his hands could be mistaken for Adam’s. In the original, his face is visible.
"The touch photo," I say.
"From the shop counter. That man isn’t Adam, and he’s buying books. It isn’t a romantic moment."
I scroll through Priya's documentation. The timeline. The deleted posts. The original photos.
"Why didn't you show me this earlier?"
"I wanted to verify it before adding another rumor to your day," Priya says. "I should have told you I was checking. I was protecting your mental health."
"And you were right to," Ruth says. "We can sort out a lie without making you read every cruel thing attached to it."
Kendra drifts back over, wine glass full. "What are we whispering about?"
I look at Priya. She nods.
"Actually," I say, "I wanted to talk to you about something."
"Oh?" Kendra settles into her chair with practiced casualness. "What's on your mind?"
"@romance_truth_teller."
The color drains from her face.
"I'm sorry?"
"The Instagram account. The one that's been defending you all over social media. The one that posted a first-person selfie from your office before deleting it."
"I don't know what you're—"
"Kendra." Priya's voice is calm, almost bored. "I have screenshots. Timestamps. The uncropped original of the Adam photo, you know, the one that shows a customer buying books, not a private moment with Adam."
Kendra's hand tightens on her wine glass. "You went through my accounts?"
"I went through public posts," Priya corrects. "Including the ones I saved before you deleted them. Pro tip: the internet is forever."
"This is insane. I'm being ambushed."
"You're being asked a direct question." I lean forward. "Did you or did you not create a fake account to imply you were having an affair with my husband?"
The room goes quiet. Even Ruth stops pretending to read.
"It wasn't… I didn't say we were having an affair."
"But you let people think it."
Kendra's composure cracks. "He was going to leave you anyway!
Everyone could see it: the way you treated him, the way you froze him out in public, the way you acted like being married to Adam Smith was some kind of burden.
I thought… I thought if people saw that he had options, that there were women who actually appreciated him—"
"You manufactured fake evidence," Ruth interrupts, her voice carrying that particular steel. "You cropped photos to create implications that didn't exist. You made my friend's already difficult situation exponentially worse."
"I was being supportive!"
"You were being delusional." Bev, who rarely speaks up, sets down her teacup with force. "We've all been in this club for five years, Kendra. We’ve watched Daisy build something here, and lately we’ve watched Adam try to earn her trust. What you did wasn't supportive. It was manipulative."
"I didn't start any rumors I didn't think were true!"
"So you admit you started them." I keep my voice level, even though my hands are shaking. "You cropped those photos deliberately. You created that account to push a narrative. You knew exactly what you were doing."
Kendra opens her mouth, closes it. Her eyes are wet.
"I thought it would help," she says, quieter now. "I thought you'd finally choose. Fight for him or let him go. You couldn't keep him waiting forever while other people actually saw him."
"By publicly humiliating me?"
"By motivating you!"
"That's not how motivation works, dear," Ruth says dryly. "That's how harassment works."
Kendra looks around the room, at the faces of women she's sat beside for five years, who've shared books and coffee and conversation with her, who are now looking at her with expressions ranging from disappointment to disgust.
"Adam," she says, turning to him like he's her last chance. "Tell them. Tell them there's something between us."
Adam stands up slowly, his face unreadable. "I'm married," he says. "And even if I were single, I'd never be with you."
Kendra stares at him.
"You should leave," Nell says, not unkindly but not kindly either. "And I think it would be best if you found another book club."
"And your volunteer shift is over," Nell adds. "Leave the keys on the counter. I'm changing the access code tonight." Kendra drops the key ring with a hard little clatter.
She picks up her bag and walks out without another word. The door chimes behind her, and the room exhales.
Afterward, when everyone's filtered out and Nell's started the closing routine and the store is settling into its nighttime quiet, I ask Adam to stay while I shelve returns in the poetry section.
"Hey," he says.
"You waited."
"You handled that well."
"I had help." I slide a Neruda collection into its proper spot, avoiding his eyes. "Priya did most of the work."
"You stood up for yourself." He moves closer, not touching, just present. "That's not nothing."
"I'm tired of people thinking they can write my story for me.
" I turn to face him, and his expression makes my breath catch.
"The internet, Kendra, everyone who has an opinion about what I should do: they don't know anything.
They don't know what it was like. They don't get to decide what counts as enough. "
"No," he agrees. "They don't."
We stand there for a moment, the poetry shelves at our backs and the soft glow of the emergency exit sign making everything feel dim and private.
"Have dinner with me," he says.
"Adam—"
"One dinner. A real one. Nothing to do with cameras or being stuck in a storm together. Just—" He takes a breath. "Just because I miss you. And I think maybe you miss me too."
"Okay," I say. "One dinner."
His smile is like sunrise after a long night. "Next Thursday? Seven o'clock?"
"Priya offered to host next week so I could have a night off. I'm taking it."
He leaves the store looking lighter than I've seen him in months, and I finish the closing routine with Nell, and I go upstairs to my apartment, and I'm almost feeling something like hope.
And then I see the note. It's pushed through the shop's mail slot and carried upstairs with the flyers, handwritten on plain white paper, and my blood goes cold the instant I read the first line.
Saw you online, Daisy-girl. You looked lonely. He doesn't deserve you. He'd never be me.
No signature. No return address. Just those words, and the pet name he used to use, and the knowledge that Cole knows exactly where I live.
I stand there beside my kitchen table, holding the note with shaking hands, and the hope I was starting to feel turns to ash in my throat.