“When we started believing money made us better than other people.” Her face tightened.

“Don’t blame all of this on me.” “I’m not,” Charles said.

“I’m responsible too.

For years, I sat there and listened to you speak to people that way, and I said nothing, because some part of me liked believing we’d escaped being ordinary.

I’m as guilty as you are.

I just hid it better.” That conversation did not save their company.

But it was the first time in many years that Charles Caldwell had stopped lying to himself, and a man has to start there, wherever he is going next.