You praised her beauty over the appetizers.

You watched them go upstairs and told me to leave them be.

And now that it’s on the screen, your instinct isn’t to ask if my heart is broken.

It’s to order me not to ruin his reputation.”

Then I reached back into the envelope for the papers I’d kept for last — not texts or receipts, but weathered, dog-eared pages.

The ledgers from the first year of Warner’s company.