“It’s hard to explain a picture to people who think you sweep floors for a living.”

By three my dining room table was covered with tabbed pages and a three-hole punch, and the light from the front window had crept all the way across to the far chairs.

I kept it simple.

Tab one, the shredding reports.

Tab two, Charles’s timestamps.

Tab three, account four-oh-two and the sanitation line items Megan Brooks shifted every quarter.

Anyone could follow it, and that was exactly the point.

A board doesn’t want a story; it wants a trail.