The lesson I took from all of it, the one I have built the rest of my life around, is that the auditor’s rule does not stop at the office door.

The refusal to look away from what does not add up is not merely a professional discipline.

It is a way of being honest, and it applies to a marriage exactly as much as to a ledger, and the peace you buy by ignoring a discrepancy in your own life is not peace at all.

It is only a debt, accruing steadily, in a currency you will eventually be made to pay.

I paid mine in a hospital.