She was giving me an easy exit.

She was telling me, gently, that I could still be the kind of man who inquired and then thought better of it, and that no one would blame me.

“That’s fine,” I said.

So she handed me the folder, balancing it against my free arm since my other still held Maya, and then her desk phone rang and she stepped away to answer it, leaving me standing in the hallway with a baby in one arm and her whole documented life in the other.

I opened it awkwardly, one-handed, and began to read.