Sasha

I've known Sasha Moreau most of my adult life. I was a groomsman at her first wedding. I've watched her operate for decades from close enough range to understand exactly how the machine works, and from far enough away that it mostly wasn't my problem.

Then it became my problem.

Sasha is from one of the oldest families in Baton Rouge — the kind where the great-grandfather was a governor and the great-grandmother allegedly poisoned him, and neither of those facts has done anything except add to the mystique. She owns the premier art gallery in town. She runs on her ex-husbands' money. And she conducts what I can only describe as a reign of social terror — a carefully maintained system of gossip, judgment, and selective approval that gives her an outsized influence over how this city sees itself.

I never cared much about that system until she pointed it at me.

We negotiated a détente. She got to meet Amber. I got to keep my business relationships intact. We have maintained a wary coexistence since. What Sasha didn't anticipate — what I suspect still bothers her more than she lets on — is that Amber has a way of rendering the whole apparatus irrelevant. A man who's genuinely content at home is immune to the particular leverage Sasha's world depends on.

She called it cheating. She wasn't entirely wrong.

Episodes