And she had, she supposed, looking at the city sliding past the car window. The story she had written had included being a waitress for four years, which she was not ashamed of, and it had included meeting a struggling entrepreneur in a diner and believing in him sincerely and helping him in ways she never spoke of and loving him with real care for a while, and it had included the slow erosion of that care as she discovered that the person she had loved was increasingly a performance wearing the face of someone who had once been real. And it had included sitting in a conference room on a rainy morning and signing her name on a document while keeping her back straight and her voice even and not giving Ethan Carter the satisfaction of her tears.
That was the story she had written.
She thought it was, on balance, one she could respect.
She would need to write what came next with the same care.