“The check?”

Rosa shook her head. “No. Your dignity.”

For seven years I kept a copy of that check framed on my office wall, and for seven years I told the same story about it — that a folded piece of paper can look like a joke to people who mock what they can’t control, and that a quiet woman can look weak to people who confuse cruelty with strength.

I believed every word of it. It was true, as far as it went.

I just hadn’t yet found out how far that was.

End of Part One.