“You were never a woman with nothing.

You were a woman who had been told she was a woman with nothing, by the only person in the room who knew the answer.”

I did not cry in that office.

I cried in the parking garage, and it was not relief.

Because the obvious question, the one that arrives about ninety seconds later and does not leave, is: then why did I not find that out on the Tuesday?

It would have cost me nothing.