“My husband texted from vegas: ‘just married my coworker. You’re pathetic BTW.’ I replied: ‘cool.’ Then I blocked his cards and changed the house locks. Next morning, police were at my door…”

Naomi was one of those women whose competence was so complete it looked almost lazy from the outside. She never raised her voice, never rushed, and had the kind of dry wit that could reduce a fool to smoke with one well-placed sentence. She closed the office door, opened her laptop, and said, “I thought you’d want to hear this.”

Then she played the voicemail on speaker.

Warren’s voice came booming through, full of righteous sputter.

“…this woman is emotionally unstable… she’s trying to ruin his career because she can’t accept he moved on… if you have any integrity at all you’ll rein her in…”

Naomi hit mute midway through and looked at me over the edge of the screen.

“He’s wasting his breath,” she said. “But I thought you should know your in-laws are now contacting corporate leadership like this is a medieval land dispute.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, don’t apologize. It’s the correct response.”

Then came the break-in attempt.