I was calm the way the surface of deep water is calm.

Because I had, folded in the portfolio under my arm, something that all his money and all his power and all his five hundred guests could not touch or buy or argue away: the truth, in my daughter’s own hand, and the science to prove it.

He had the whole room.

I had the one thing the room could not withstand.

And I understood, watching him, that the vast machinery of his success, the wealth, the reputation, the campaign, the untouchability, was not a fortress at all but a great height, and that the higher he had climbed, the further there was to fall, and that I was holding, quietly, under my arm, the single thing that could bring the whole tower down.