The binder in front of me told a story I would once have thought impossible.

Under Katarina Rostova, Cardinal had not merely survived; it had turned a corner and kept going.

Three consecutive quarters of real, organic growth.

The last of the dangerous debt retired.

And a twenty-two percent return delivered to the employee stock ownership pool — which meant that eight hundred families were measurably better off than they had been, not because of a speech, but because the numbers had finally been made to tell the truth.

That was the phrase I kept returning to, through all of it — not beaten into submission, not spun, not managed, just made to tell the truth, which is harder and rarer than any of the alternatives.