Monday came fast.
I was ready before I was ready.
That's the only way to describe it.
Clothes laid out the night before. Carol's number in my recent calls. The eleven pages printed and in a folder I didn't plan to show anyone but needed to have with me anyway.
Like proof.
Like ballast.
Lena picked me up at nine fifteen.
She looked at me when I got in the car.
"You slept," she said.
"Mostly," I said.
"That's enough," she said.
She drove.
Neither of us talked much.
Lena understood the value of quiet before something hard.
She'd driven me to police stations twice in the early days when I was still believing the system would help quickly.
It hadn't.
But she'd been there for the drive both times.
She was here for this one.
The federal building was grey and serious and exactly
