You ever just… look around at your life and wonder how you ended up here? Not in a bad way, not really. I mean, I have a nice house, comfortable, good retirement coming up. You work hard your whole life, right? You make choices. And then you get to a certain age, and you start seeing the pattern of those choices, and sometimes it just hits you in the gut. Like, was that really *me* making those choices? Or was it… I don't know, the town? The expectations? It’s hard to tell, when you’ve been here so long. Everyone knows everyone. My dad knew their dads. My kids went to school with their kids. It’s just… how things are. And I’m the bank manager, you know? That’s a big deal here. Or it feels like a big deal. You get invited to all the dinners, you’re on the board for this, the committee for that. Everyone trusts you. They come to you for their big decisions. And you try to do the right thing, you really do. But sometimes the right thing for *you* and the right thing for *everyone* else… they aren’t always the same thing. Especially when it comes to the manufacturing plants. We’ve got a couple of them in town, been here forever. Most of the jobs. You just… you see things. You read the reports. And you hear things. About what they’re doing, what they’re not doing. And it doesn’t sit right, you know? It really doesn't. But what are you going to do? Tell them no? Tell them they can’t expand, they can’t get that new line of credit? You’d be the guy who killed the town. The guy who put people out of work. The guy who stopped progress. And then where would *I* be? I mean, I don't even — whatever. So you sign the papers. You approve the loans. You smile and shake hands at the Chamber of Commerce meetings. And you go home, and you try not to think about it. You just try to forget that little voice in your head, the one that tells you you’re part of the problem. That you’re helping them keep doing what they’re doing, even when you know it's not… well, it’s not *right*. And you tell yourself it’s for the good of the community, that you’re just doing your job. But sometimes, late at night, you just wonder if that’s really what you believe, or if it’s just what you tell yourself to get to sleep. You know that feeling? Like you’ve somehow managed to fool everyone, including yourself, for decades. And now it’s too late to change. Too close to the end to rock the boat. What would even be the point?