“And then, when the questions started, he let them pin it on me.

I lost my license for a lie he told.

So.” She straightened the towels.

“You and me want the same thing.” And she walked away, and I stood there with a folded paper against my ribs that was worth more than my inheritance, and for the first time in six months I let myself believe that the story they had written about me was not, after all, the last word.

I have thought a great deal about Priya, and about the strange economy of the inside that brought her to me, because it is the part of this story that people find hardest to believe and that I find the most true.