I don’t know if this even counts, really. I mean, it’s not a secret, not in the way most people mean. More like a quiet, sort of... slow-motion disappearance. I’m 55, and I own this little business, you know? It’s been my life for, oh, coming up on fifteen years now. And for so long, I was part of this networking group, other small business owners, mostly women. We met every Tuesday, every single Tuesday, for years. We’d talk about inventory, or employee issues, or just, you know, the sheer grind of it all. It was hard, really hard sometimes, but we were in it together. And now... now it’s just me. I mean, it feels like it’s just me. One by one, they’ve retired. Or sold. Some of them moved away, just sort of... faded out. Martha, she sold her bakery last spring. Said she just wanted to knit, really. And Sarah, her gift shop, she got tired of the online competition, I guess. She just closed up shop and moved to Arizona. I don’t know if they think about it, or if they notice that I’m still here, still going, every single day, every day. It’s like, they’ve all reached this... this kind of freedom, this disengagement, and I’m still tethered. I wonder if it’s a form of what they call 'bereavement,' in a way. Not for a person, exactly, but for a connection that was so... so regular, so reliable. It reminds me a little bit of when I got divorced, really. That was in my late forties, early fifties. Suddenly, all those friends, all those couples we used to socialize with, they just... chose sides, or they just vanished. It was like I had to build a whole new life, a whole new social circle, from scratch, at an age when most people are sort of settled. And now, it feels a little like that again, this sort of isolation, but this time, it’s not personal, it’s just... the way time moves, I suppose. It’s a strange thing, to be the last one left, still holding the fort. I don't know if I'm sad for them, or for me, or just for the way things just... change.