The margins were sensible.

The risks were understandable.

The crew had helped shape the estimate.

I felt a familiar excitement rise in me.

It was the feeling I’d had when I was young and the whole business existed on two desks and a promise.

I hadn’t lost that part of myself after all.

PART 18: The Secret Beneath the Affair

People sometimes ask whether I would do it all again: mail the package, visit Andrew in the hospital, and follow the papers into a crisis that ended my marriage and changed our company.