And you chose your lifestyle over my safety, for months.” She wept, and did not defend herself, and pushed a small external hard drive across the table toward me.

“Everything I could secretly copy,” she whispered.

“Contracts, recordings, transfers, names.

Raymond has run this for over a decade.” I took it.

And as I did, I understood that her final good act and her long silence were both real, and that neither one cancelled the other, and that I was going to have to learn to hold both.

Chapter 13 — Loving and Protecting

Before I left the coffee shop, Diane caught my wrist, gently.