She showed me a photograph of her roses; I told her about a warehouse supervisor who had designed a simpler loading schedule and saved her entire team hours of overtime.

Before she left, Helen touched my cheek.

“Whatever you decide about the marriage, you don’t have to earn the right to be treated with respect.”

After she drove away, I slept through the night for the first time in a week.

Not because anything had been solved, but because someone who knew us both had spoken without turning the truth into a contest.

PART 12: The Employee Who Kept Copies