My three-day emergency leave had turned into three weeks. I had one phone call to make on the way to the airport: my commanding officer, to report back in. The Army would have forms to fill out and a debriefing to schedule and the ordinary machinery of returning to the work that was waiting.
I walked to my car in the parking lot, unlocked it, and sat behind the wheel for a minute before starting the engine.
I thought about the birthday cards. Her handwriting, round and even, that I had recognized on a sticky note in a conference room above a sentence that began with if. I thought about the holiday visit and the password and the mild exasperation about email attachments, an ordinary Tuesday evening that had turned out to matter in a way neither of us could have known at the time.
I started the engine and pulled out of the lot.
Whatever she had been trying to finish, it was finished. The trail she had laid with such deliberate care had brought the truth into a courtroom and put it on the record, which was where she had always intended it to go.
She had been an accountant. She had understood that documented facts don’t disappear just because someone wants them to.
She had been right about that, too.
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