It was, more than anything, a correction of a way of valuing people that I had held my entire adult life, and that the whole ordeal had shattered.

I had spent my career hiring for credentials.

Degrees, pedigrees, the right schools, the right firms, the polished resumes and the confident handshakes; these were the things I had learned to trust, the markers by which I sorted the worthy from the unworthy.

And Chloe had every one of them.

She was educated, and elegant, and impeccably presented, the kind of person who interviews beautifully, who says all the right things, who looks exactly like what our culture has taught us competence and quality look like.

Marisol had none of it.