"I know."
"I asked them for it. I asked for it to put in with him." He was still holding it by the edges, between his thumb and two fingers, as if it might be evidence, as if he were afraid of putting his own prints on it. "A woman from HR called me at home and said it was company property and it had been destroyed per policy. Those words. Per policy."
"I know," Agata said again, because it was the only true thing she could say in a lobby. "I was the policy. They gave it to me to destroy. I didn't."
Behind them the phone on the security desk rang, and Danita answered it, and said, "Yes, ma'am, she's here, she's at the desk now," and Alvin Varnum put his son's badge into the breast pocket of his blue blazer, behind the Stanhope crest, and buttoned the flap over it, and became the Stone again, all at once, as if someone had thrown a switch.
"HR's on her way down," he said. "You'll wait over here."
Gwendolyn Tremblay came out of the elevator at seven fifty-two with a blue folder held against her chest and the expression of a person who had rehearsed a speech for a different version of the morning. She was in her forties, Agata guessed, with reading glasses pushed up into a sensible brown bob and a lanyard printed with the words PEOPLE & CULTURE, and she walked fast across the marble in low heels that clicked, and when she got close enough to see Agata's head she slowed down, and her mouth softened, and she said, "Oh, Agata. Oh, I'm so sorry. You didn't get my emails."
"I've been on medical leave," Agata said. "I haven't had my work laptop since May. You had it collected. Somebody from IT came to my house with a box."
"I sent them to your personal address too. I'm sure I did." Gwendolyn opened the folder, looked at something, and closed it again with the look of a woman discovering that she had been sure about something she had not checked. "The Gmail. The one in Workday."
"That address is from 2012. I haven't opened it in years."
"Oh, God." Gwendolyn put two fingers against her forehead. "Okay. Okay. Can we go somewhere and sit? We have the Bushnell Room. Mr. Varnum, will you—"