The rest is not a story, it is a stack of ordinary Tuesdays.
I went back to work on a Monday and stayed there. In January I was put on a new account, a big one, the kind of account that gets your name mentioned in rooms you don't have clearance to enter, and Renata Calloway introduced me to the client and did not correct anyone when they assumed she was my boss or my mentor or something else. I never found out which of those is true. I did not ask.
I got my quiet life back. I want to be honest about how much of it was quiet before, and how much of it is quiet now, because the difference matters. Before, I had a clean file and no husband and a first-place trophy for a thing I never won. Now I have the same file, and I know every line of it, and the trophy, if there is one, is that I know
