They expected my fatigue to make complicated papers easy.

Not because I was unintelligent.

Because intelligence works poorly when someone is postpartum, sleep-deprived, grieving a marriage, feeding a newborn, caring for another child, and desperate for conflict to end.

That was the plan we eventually proved.

Not some cinematic conspiracy to poison me.

No secret drug in the tea.

No plan to physically harm me.

Something much more ordinary.