Miles looked at me, seeking an explanation. L.K., too, all curiosity. Bo, though, was nodding, as though to say, On with it. In my head, I’d imagined explaining the article to Miles alone, at the end of the day, when I’d had a chance to reply to required emails, clean my office, prepare. I’d gone through scripts, role-playing both sides. This wasn’t the way I’d planned it, but—spoiler alert!—sometimes plans don’t work out.

“Thanks, Sara,” I said, and she withdrew, closing the door behind her. I shuffled my papers and my binders to form a neat stack on my lap. My phone I silenced, then lay it facedown on the top. “There will be an article coming out next week,” I said, halting at first, then gradually with more confidence. “It will be about my father, our family, and how he stole from his office to help support us as well as another woman who was not his wife. I am one of the sources, and not an anonymous one.”

“What Melinda Darley said that day, about your tuition,” said L.K., tapping her pen, in a slow rhythm, against her knee, “was true, then?”

“Yes,” I said, meeting her eyes, then Miles’s.

But Miles and L.K. seemed about as shocked as the average DC insider when it came to public scandal. Which is to say, not very.

Instead, Miles articulated what I suspected was on everyone’s mind. “So, you’re throwing yourself to the wolves.” His feet were on the ground again, his arms crossed. “Why?”

“Because I’m done hiding from them,” I said.

“Bo,” Miles said, rising, beginning to pace, “talk her out of this, my God.”

“Don’t do that,” I said to Miles. “That’s not his job. And I won’t be persuaded.”

“You may have to resign.” L.K. scooted closer to me on the couch, her hand pressed to her stomach. “If this goes south.”

“I will have to resign,” I said. “Atlas will write in his article that I am a former staffer of yours. Not a current one. It will sound better.”

Miles and L.K. began to voice their objections. They talked over me and around me. Their verbal battle, if I could understand it, was about who disagreed with my choice to resign more.

“I’m sorry to ambush you!” I raised my voice, intent on making it heard. “This all happened quickly. But I don’t want you to think I take it lightly.” I had the sensation that people were quieting, drawing breaths. Or maybe it was just them drawing back the arrows in their bows. I resumed at normal volume. “This was, in so many ways, my home. You were—are—still my people. I can’t have the fallout from this, whatever it ends up being, land on this office. That’s why you’re going to let me go.”