Ellen looked down at the plant, then at the employee badge hanging from Maya's neck. "I wish he had."
Maya laughed once, a sound that held no amusement. "You tried to tell him Monday. Then yesterday. He doesn't want to know."
"I know."
Ellen reached into the pocket of her uniform and removed a pale blue envelope. It was ordinary stationery, sealed with a strip of transparent tape. "Don't open this here," she said. "It's information you need to give to the independent investigator. There is a contact number inside. The lawyer has already agreed to receive it."
Maya stared at the envelope. "Proof of what?"
"Proof that somebody started protecting the evidence before they decided to blame you. It doesn't make every accusation disappear. But it means you won't have to fight with only your word."
"Miss Ellen, who are you?"
The older woman glanced toward the far end of the corridor, where Otis was waiting beside the service door. "Somebody tired of watching. Go home, baby. Call your attorney. Let the people who have access to the records do their work."
Maya took the envelope. Her fingers trembled. "I don't know how to thank you."
"Then don't. Just keep telling the truth."
At five o'clock, security walked Maya through the lobby. Shenine was standing near the reception desk with Jamal. She held a coffee in one hand and watched Maya pass as though attending a small parade arranged in her honor.
"Bye-bye, accounts girl," she said. "You should have known how this ends."
Maya kept walking. When she reached the revolving doors, Ellen stood beside a planter holding her mop upright. Their eyes met. Ellen gave her a small nod, the kind that promised nothing impossible but reminded a frightened person that she had not been forgotten.
The moment Maya stepped into the street, she felt her chest tighten. She did not cry until she reached the privacy of a bus shelter two blocks away. Then she sat down beside her plant and called Isaiah.
"Are you home?" she asked.
"At the library. What's wrong?"
"I lost my job."
There was a pause, then her brother asked the only question she could bear to answer. "Do you need me to come get you?"
"No. I just needed to hear your voice."
"Okay," he said. "Then talk to me until you're ready to get on the bus."
For ten minutes they spoke about nothing important. He told her his professor had returned a test, and she asked whether he had eaten lunch. Their ordinary conversation gave Maya something solid to hold while the city moved around her. She was not an employee badge, not an accusation in an email, not a young woman whom an executive had decided could be discarded. She was her mother's daughter and Isaiah's sister, and the world had not ended just because someone with a large office said she no longer belonged in a building.