SERA
“She brought a letter.”
The supervising counsel said it at eight forty-seven on Thursday morning, thirteen minutes before Adaeze Mensah’s second session, with the quality of someone who had been doing this work long enough to recognize when a claimant was carrying something that would change the shape of a case.
Sera looked up from the evidentiary framework she had been building since Tuesday. “What kind of letter.”
“She did not say. She asked if she could submit it as part of the documentary record. I told her yes and she said she would bring it to the session.” Counsel looked at the case file between them. “She has been carrying it for twenty-two years. She told the receptionist that when she arrived.”
Sera looked at the gap in the timeline between 2003 and 2007. At the theoret
