I have replayed that detail more than any other from the whole night: my husband, the loudest and most enthusiastic clapper in the room, applauding Solstice Holdings without the faintest idea that he was applauding me.

He thought he was applauding his own good fortune — a well-capitalized investor arriving to save the company he expected to be named president of, an investor whose money would fund the bright future he’d been describing for three weeks.

He clapped hard.

He clapped like a man welcoming his own coronation.

And I stood beside him watching him celebrate the exact instrument of his destruction, and I felt the strangest calm settle over me, the calm that comes at the very top of a thing you have built with great care and are now about to watch work.

There was no hurry left in me, no anxiety.