She paid him.

Her statement says thirty thousand dollars in two payments, and his says twenty-five and that he “didn’t really think about it,” which I believe, because I have met him.

She insists — and both of them insist, and I have come to believe it — that there was never anything between them beyond that transaction.

It was not an affair.

It was procurement.

There is one part of her statement I have never repeated to anybody and I am going to put it here because it is the only thing in this account that changed how I understand what happened.