And then he was gone, arrested and disgraced, and the company that everyone said would collapse without him did not collapse.

It thrived.

It thrived because it turned out that the reckless expansions and the executive waste and the theft had been the real drag on it all along, and that a person who actually paid attention — who read the quarterly finances, who knew the difference between a real vendor and a ghost, who cared whether the line cooks were paid fairly — could take the same restaurants and make them healthier than they had ever been.

I was not the supportive wife.