Ophelia listened with growing discomfort as her friend spoke. Of course everyone had assumed the worst of him; he'd run off with a woman who was engaged to someone else. That was a fact, and her friend seemed to be in denial about it. Ophelia didn't know how to respond to that. Sympathy she could handle; she had had, after all, her own family scandals (though they had fortunately not come to public light). That being said, she had never sat around trying to come up with fantasies in which her sister hadn't run away from her husband. She had wondered why, and wished it had never happened, of course, but she hadn't doubted the actual evidence that had been presented to her. How could November be squaring with this level of cognitive dissonance, to believe something that was contrary to what everyone else in society was saying?

"Oh, Nova," she said, treading softly now as she tried to determine how best to navigate this unexpected minefield. "Hasn't he told you anything? He must have had his reasons for doing what he did."

(And maybe those reasons were that Miss Finch was five months pregnant, or something along those lines. Ophelia did not have quite as much faith in Reuben Crouch's honor as November seemed to.)