He closed the folder.

“Then January second isn’t just a meeting,” he said.

“It’s the day your husband finds out who he tried to rob.”

I want to be clear about that second folder, because it changed the whole character of what I was doing, in my own mind, and I need it understood.

Up to the moment I found those emails, this had been about me — my house, my marriage, my money, my dignity.

And I could have justified almost any response on those grounds; a woman defending her own life is entitled to a wide latitude.