I told her that somewhere out there, tonight, there is a woman sitting in a kitchen or a hospital or a lawyer’s waiting room, being told by people who claim to love her that the thing that does not add up is her own fault, that she is imagining it, that the peace matters more than the truth, that a good wife does not ask.

And I told Maya that I know exactly how that woman feels, because I was her, and that the whole purpose of my firm — the reason I kept the name and built the practice and specialize in exactly the cases I specialize in — is to be, for that woman, the person I did not have on the worst night of my life: someone who will look at what does not add up, and believe her, and say the words that change everything. Let’s trace it.

Let’s document it.

Let’s find out the truth, together, and let’s present it to the world. That is the whole of my work now.

I do the math, for the women no one else would do it for.

And there is no firm in the country, at any price, that could offer me a reason to do anything else.