The board watched a woman refuse to defend the indefensible thing she’d done, and drew the obvious conclusion — that a person that unflinching about her own guilt was probably telling the truth about everyone else’s.

It cost her the suspension, and the community service, and a permanent line on her record.

She paid it without complaint, because the alternative was to let her one genuine wrong become the thing that saved him.

She would carry her mistake in the open, where it could not be used as a weapon, rather than hide it and hand him the key.

That was not the move of a broken woman.

It was the move of a CFO who had finally woken all the way up, and who understood that the cleanest set of books is the one that hides nothing, not even the entry that shames you.