I married a man in prison for money. Three years later his conviction was overturned — and eight days after he came home he put a black box on the kitchen table and said, “Now it’s my turn.”

He was the ninth lawyer. He was also the first one who gave me more than ten minutes.

He went through that folder at his own desk for about forty minutes with a pen in his hand while I sat on the other side of it and did not speak.

And then he asked me one question.

He said: “Mrs. Loewe. Is there anything in this file that looks bad for him? Not that is bad. That looks bad.”

And I said no.

And Dov Pell sat back and said that without something in there explaining the operations manager’s own hand on those transfers, there was nothing he could do with it.

And he closed the folder and slid it back across the desk, and he was decent about it, and he did not charge me for the forty minutes.

And I drove home. Eleven minutes. I remember every turn of that drive and what was on the radio.