My Husband Had Two Children With His Secretary

They are not the same thing. Wisdom knows what it is waiting for. Accommodation simply waits.

I had been wise without knowing it, and now I knew it, and the knowing was not triumphant in the way that stories about women like me are sometimes told. It was quieter than that. It was the feeling of occupying space that had always been available to me and choosing, finally, not to make myself smaller than it required.

I opened my laptop. I had a board call in forty minutes, a review of the recovered asset allocation in the afternoon, and a dinner with the firm’s managing partner in the evening to discuss formally restoring my name to the letterhead.