“I am.” Why wasn’t she screaming and cursing? Why hadn’t she hurled the pages across the room? It wasn’t the floating feeling this time, saving her. She was fully in her body, still hungry. The burger was a little bit rare, oozing grease and its faintly bloody juices. She was going to eat the whole thing and these salty fries, too. “I guess it’s a relief. To see it all in black and white. It wasn’t all in my head.”

For twenty years, she’d been pretzeling herself, telling herself that there was no conspiracy, that she was just imagining the secret conversations among men aligning against her. Well, she was done with that now. Phoebe was done being small and modest and charming and appropriate.

“Did you read them all?” Zanne asked. She felt sick with anticipation. She’d made amends before—God, so many amends. She knew the drill. Forgiveness wasn’t the point. You did it to correct your mistakes and to heal from the secrets and shame that your addiction fed on. You didn’t expect forgiveness, but it was sometimes granted. Phoebe couldn’t do that for Zanne anyway. It was Caitlyn she’d harmed, Caitlyn she’d have to make amends to someday soon. This was something different—a disclosure agreement, maybe. A pact to tell Phoebe, and herself, the difficult truth.

“You mean, including the one about you?” Phoebe said.

Zanne looked down at the table. She squared her shoulders and looked up again, right in Phoebe’s eyes. It was hard to own something she was still in the process of decoding, but she wanted to try.

“I knew what I did to Caitlyn was shitty. Politely cutthroat was how I thought of it at the time. Efficient. But I didn’t see the full picture, the settlement and the NDA Ted’s lawyers had her sign, the rumors Holly circulated, the way it all added up over time, even my part in it, and all the cards were stacked against her. If you’d told me eight years ago, when I took this job, that I was going to knife another woman like that—” Zanne sighed. “I was going to say I wouldn’t have believed it, but honestly? It’s worse than that. I don’t know if I would have cared. That’s how much I needed the job.”

“You have the power now,” Phoebe said. “We both do.”

Did they? After reading Holly’s interview, Zanne wasn’t so sure.

“Are you going to use the emails?” Zanne asked.

“Will it get you in trouble if I do?”

“I already quit.”

Phoebe paused midbite. Zanne shrugged and dipped a handful of fries in ketchup. She crammed them in her mouth.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Phoebe said. “But can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you working for Ted?”