Quade pleaded to a lesser count in December, unauthorized access to a computer system, and he cooperated fully, and he was sentenced to probation and restitution.
Our divorce was final in March. I kept the house and I kept the dog and I kept my name, and he kept the truck and the debts he had been trying to pay off with my client’s evidence.
The disciplinary office cleared my record in writing in February, in a two-page letter that said, in effect, that I had been used and that I had not been negligent.
Two people I had worked with for years have not spoken to me since the hearing, and I have stopped expecting them to. I want to be honest about that part, because it is the part nobody puts in the ending. Being right cost me a marriage and a mentor and two friendships, and I would do it again on the same Tuesday in the same room.
On a Friday in April I went back into that evidence room alone to sign the last Kessler exhibit. The cabinets were the same and the light was the same and the cart was pushed against the far wall where it had always been.
I did not feel anything standing there, and it took me a minute to understand that the absence of fear was the feeling.
I signed my name on the last line, dated it, and closed the file. Then I turned off the light and walked out and left the door unlocked behind me, because nothing in that room belonged to me anymore except the work, and the work was finished.
