Teresa Sandoval called me six weeks later. I was in my mother's kitchen, because I had moved out of the house, because the house was in the middle of a settlement negotiation, and I was staying in the small bedroom with the window that looked at the bird feeder.
"Eleanor," she said. "I heard you left Meridian."
"I did."
"I also heard some things about the account. Internal channels are not what they were." Her voice was careful. She had been the Hanover account manager for four years. She had taken my calls at nine at night. She had believed me when I told her the benchmarks would hold.
"Teresa," I said, "I can't tell you anything that's confidential. But I can tell you that I would request the raw processing data for the first three quarters and compare it to the monthly reports Merid
