Kit read it out loud to me in her office in a flat voice, occasionally saying sure and that’s cute.

The judge — a woman named Alcott, in circuit court, nothing like Harlan — threw out most of my claims and let two of them live.

The old firing was time-barred, exactly as Kit had predicted. The October phone call to Verdant survived. So did the interference claim against Grant.

“Two out of six,” Kit said. “That’s a win. Don’t make that face.”

Discovery started in February.

Here is what I had imagined: a locked file, a smoking gun, a paper trail of malice with my name on every page. Here is what actually arrived, in a bankers box, four months later: