The new HR director — who had replaced Linda, and who I had met twice, and who I had quietly researched — was a woman named Carmen Delgado. Thirty-eight years old. Ten years at the firm. Had, according to a rumor I heard from a woman in accounts payable, been the one who pushed Linda out. I sat with the folder for a week. I showed it to my mother. My mother, the paralegal, read the entire seventy-eight pages. She did not cry. She did not say she was sorry.

She said, with the same calm she used to use when she helped me with math homework, "Honey, this is a slam dunk. You are going to destroy him." I did not want to destroy him. I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted the next twenty-three-year-old woman to show up at the firm and not have to open a folder. I told my mother I was going to give Anthony one chance. She said I was being too kind. I said I had to live with myself. And the next day, I asked Anthony for a meeting.