Selma learned about the website's lead story from her hairdresser. The photograph showed a former colleague beside a man whose face she did not recognize, under a question suggesting an affair. It had been taken outside a hospital. Her colleague was accompanying her adult brother to an appointment. Selma called her fiancé Haris, the website's owner, expecting him to remove the story immediately.
"We didn't claim anything," he replied. "We asked a question." He added that other sites were already sharing the photograph and the whole thing could no longer be taken back. Samples of tablecloths for their wedding lay in the living room. Selma folded them and put them in a drawer slowly, as though a sudden movement might turn her doubt into a final decision.
Haris's mother invited her to lunch. She spoke about work pressures, employees' wages, and things people wrote when tired. Selma said she could not plan a shared life funded by turning someone's hardest day into a headline. The older woman defended her son but stopped eating as she spoke. In the end, she only asked Selma not to decide in anger.
They did not speak for a month. Haris sent flowers and promised editorial changes without making a single concrete alteration. The website published another story about an unknown couple's divorce. Selma was almost ready to believe she could stay with him and influence his work when his mother called again. This time, they met on a bench outside the library, without lunch or family photographs.
She took an old newspaper page from her bag. Haris's father had once run the same business in print. He published a letter from a woman who had begged him to protect her privacy because he knew it would sell better. "I thought I could change him by being good to him too," she said. "In the end, I only learned not to read what paid for our house." She did not tell Selma to leave. She gave her back the chance to see the full price of staying.
Selma returned the ring, and they divided the venue deposit according to their payments. Haris later published a correction to the story about her colleague. She was glad for her colleague, but did not take it as an invitation to return. She remained in occasional contact with his mother. One spring, they met outside the library again, both carrying books. They discussed what they had read without needing to defend the author.