I don’t know why this particular memory has come back to me now, at almost three in the morning, when the coyotes are yapping down near the creek and the moon is just a sliver, but it has, and it feels… heavy. Like one of those river stones I used to find as a boy, all smooth and cool but weighing a surprising amount when you picked it up. This happened, oh, it must have been 1974, maybe ’75. I was a junior architect, felt like I had the world by the tail then, even though I was just barely getting by, living in that tiny apartment above Mrs. Gable’s bakery—the smell of fresh bread every morning was a comfort, I’ll say that much. But anyway, this was a big deal, a presentation to the firm’s senior partners. Mr. Henderson, the one who always wore those hideous mustard-colored suits, he was my boss. And he was… well, he was a charmer, if you didn’t know him well. Always a joke, a pat on the back. But he had this habit, this insidious way of taking your ideas, polishing them just a bit, and then presenting them as his own. A real master of what they call *kleptomnesia*, I suppose, though I didn't know the word then. I’d worked on this design for months, staying late, sketching on napkins at the diner, even dreaming about it. It was for that new library in Burlington, a modern take on the traditional New England style, with these sweeping, cantilevered rooflines that really broke new ground for the firm. I remember I’d spent a whole weekend in the dusty archives, researching local granite types, even driving all the way out to Northfield to look at a particular quarry. I had my three-ring binder, full of renderings, calculations, even a little cardboard model I’d painstakingly cut and glued. But there I was, standing beside Mr. Henderson, in that cold, cavernous board room, all polished wood and stern faces. He was at the podium, a microphone right there, and he’s talking, talking about *his* vision, *his* innovative approach, *his* "bold reinterpretation of classical elements." And I’m just… nodding. Smiling. A silent co-conspirator in my own diminishing. I caught the eye of one of the younger partners, Mr. Davies, and I swear there was a flicker of something there, recognition maybe, or pity. But he looked away quickly. And that was it. The design was approved, went on to win some regional award, and Mr. Henderson took all the credit, of course. Got a big bonus, probably. I got a small raise a few months later, not even a whisper of a mention. It didn’t surprise me, not really. It was just… another brick in the wall, you know? Another lesson in how things truly worked, not how they were *supposed* to work. And now, all these years later, living out here where the biggest news is usually Mrs. Peterson’s prize-winning zucchini, it still gnaws at me a little. Not with anger, not anymore. Just a sort of quiet, melancholic observation. What would have happened, I sometimes wonder, if I had just… spoken up? Even a whisper. But I didn't. And that’s the real confession, I suppose. The silence.