She never asked, in all those years of ignoring me, what I was learning down there among the facts.

That was the mistake.

Because the person who controls the room controls only what is said in it.

The person who understands the numbers controls what is true — and in the end, in any room that matters, the truth is the only thing that cannot be out-talked.

She had the room.

I had the books.

It was never a fair fight.

And I have come to believe there is a lesson in that which reaches far beyond my stepmother and her stolen company, a lesson about where power actually lives, as opposed to where it appears to live.