I did not know any of that until later.

What I heard on the phone that morning was only the binder, and her breath, and the particular stillness of a professional recognizing that the improbable thing she had prepared for across ten years had, against all odds, arrived on her watch.

Then she said, “Give me twenty minutes,” and her voice had changed — the worry gone out of it, replaced by something flat and fast and precise.

It was the sound of a woman going to work.