Chapter 14 - The Social Excommunication
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The days following the exposure were a whirlwind of total social collapse for Eleanor Vance.
Her country club membership was quietly revoked by the board of trustees, who cited "conduct unbecoming of the organization's values." The regional children's hospital foundation she had chaired for seven years issued a public statement severing all ties with her name.
Distant relatives who had spent years listening to Eleanor brag about her family suddenly blocked her phone number. The illusion she had spent forty years building—the matriarch of high society, the loving mother, the pillar of virtue—was completely obliterated.
Desperate and isolated in her expensive hotel room, Eleanor tried calling my cell phone forty-seven times in a single night.
I didn't block her number. I simply let it ring, allowing the sound of her frantic, unanswered calls to serve as the background noise to our peaceful home.
When she finally realized I would never pick up, she sent a long, rambling text message filled with a bizarre mixture of rage and pathetic pleading:
Julian! Please delete the video! People are harassing me in the hotel lobby! My bank accounts are being audited by your lawyer! You are destroying your mother’s life over a misunderstanding! I apologize if I was harsh to Clara, but I am your family! You cannot leave me like this!
I looked down at the glowing screen, my thumb hovering over the display.
I didn't type a long paragraph. I didn't insult her. I simply typed six words:
May you like
You are not my family anymore.
Then, I hit block.
