In February, when I found the mileage log, before Halvard, before the audit, before any of it — I could have walked into the living room and said, “What is in Tucson?”

And he would have lied, and I would have known, and we would have had a bad six months and a normal divorce, and Vextor Dynamics would have carried on with a chief executive stealing from it, and Michelle would have had two babies and a house, and nobody would have looked at anything.

That version exists.

I have run it many times.

In that version everybody is somewhat happier and one thing is different, which is that I would have spent the rest of my life not knowing why the arithmetic did not work.