The first was the title. Her name came off the leadership distribution list. She moved to an interior office with no window. Clients she had managed for a decade were reassigned with a polite email she did not write.
The second was Jill. Over drinks in November, Jill said, "You're letting him make you a mascot. People think it's a performance. That you're doing penance so you can keep your job."
"Maybe partly," Lindsay said. "I'm trying to find out."
"You don't owe anybody a public flogging."
"It isn't a flogging. It's files."
Jill stopped asking her to lunch after that. It was not a fight. It was a door closing slowly on a hydraulic hinge.
The third was money. Shannon's spring tuition came out of savings. Pete signed up to teach summer school without asking her, and when she objected he said, "I like summer school. The kids who show up actually want to be there," which was Pete being kind and practical in the same breath, as usual.
The fourth, and the worst, was the work.
The outside reviewer was Odile Baptiste, a Haitian-American credit officer who had spent thirty years at a community development lender in Flatbush and did not, as far as Lindsay could tell, believe in small talk. On the first day she read three of Lindsay's memos without comment and then said, "Your notes are very consistent. You were careful." She let that sit. "Careful is usually how it's done."
Rafael worked across the table from her. In the Osei file, Lindsay found two notes in his handwriting from the previous summer — founder strong, cooperative structure de-risks labor; recommend fast track — with her own initials beside them and nothing else. She had read them. She had done nothing. She showed him, because not showing him felt like another lie.
"I know," he said. "I wrote them." He met her eyes. "I'm not going to make you feel better about it, Ms. Corrigan. That's not my job either."