The Person With the Least Power in the Room

He looked at the portrait of Elowen on the living-room wall, flanked by fresh red roses.

“Because dignity doesn’t need to make a scene to be powerful, Junie,” he said.

“Sometimes it just takes one person to look closely, see the truth, and do the right thing.” Junie reached out and straightened a rose in the vase.

“Like Bea did.” He smiled.

“Exactly like Bea.” And perhaps that was why the story became a kind of legend inside the company — not for the receptionists who lost their jobs or the manager who was disgraced, but for the image of a woman carrying a stack of towels, who looked at a heartbroken father, a sleeping child, and a bouquet of bruised flowers, and decided that none of the three deserved to be left out in the cold.

Because sometimes the person with the least power in the room is the only one who truly understands what it means to be human.

THE END.