I didn’t answer. I drove home.
Three cars were parked on my street in front of the house, and one of them I didn’t recognize. It was a dark sedan, conservative and professional-looking. The porch light was on in the middle of the afternoon. I sat in my car for a moment and looked at my own front windows, where I could see through the glass that my dining table, which I keep clear, was covered with papers.
Those were my papers.
I had a moment, sitting in my car, where I understood that the appropriate response to what I was looking at was not grief or shock but the same cold clarity that had been settling in me over the past week. I got out of the car and went inside.
Max was on my sofa with his head in his hands. Lena was pacing the length of my living room in a way that suggested she had been pacing for some time. And there was a man I had never seen before, in a gray suit that communicated competence and neutrality, standing at my dining table with several of my documents spread open in front of him, turning pages with the unhurried confidence of someone who believes he has permission.
