Because for a second or two I was not the auditor and I was not my father’s daughter and I was not the architect of anyone’s ruin.

I was just the woman it had happened to, hearing it again, in public, with three hundred strangers hearing it too.

There is a particular violation in that — in having the worst moment of your life turned into evidence, played through speakers, entered into a record, discussed.

I had chosen it, and I would choose it again, because it was the truth and the truth was the whole point.

But I will not pretend it did not cost me something to stand upright through it.