When it finished, a heavy quiet settled over us.

“Theresa made decisions on my behalf that she had no right to make,” I said, my voice thick with remorse.

But even as I said it, I knew the assistant was only half the story.

Theresa had built the last few feet of the wall.

I had designed the whole of it, and ordered it built, and admired it, and called it discipline.

Chapter 10 — Accountability