When the transaction was finished, David thanked the teller and asked Sarah whether she had time for coffee. She smiled and said she had ten minutes before a meeting, which he understood was a more honest answer than pretending her schedule belonged entirely to him. They sat near the window where he had once been instructed to wait for the police. The leather chairs had been replaced during a routine renovation, but he could still locate the exact place. Sarah noticed where he was looking and waited for him to speak.
"Do you think we've changed enough?" he asked. She took a moment, considering the question as seriously as he intended. "Enough to prove change is possible," she answered. "Not enough to stop checking whether we're doing it. People are still people, and organizations still reward the things they measure. We have to keep measuring the right things and listening when the numbers don't tell the whole story."
He nodded and looked toward the display beside the information desk. A little girl was reading its explanation while her grandfather waited in line. The preserved ashes were nearly unrecognizable as parts of a check, and David found that comforting. They had never been the money, the whole story, or the full measure of the people involved. They were remnants of one choice that could have ended with silence but had instead exposed an institution's weaknesses.
Marcus was not working that afternoon. He had a scheduled volunteer shift at the Southside center, where he was helping families prepare for meetings with lenders. David knew the former manager remained under oversight at the bank and had not recovered his old authority. He also knew that Marcus had continued his work long after the first public attention disappeared. Those facts did not oblige David to seek a private reconciliation, but they allowed him to believe that the consequences had become more than punishment.
Sarah asked whether he had ever considered speaking with Marcus again. David looked at the street beyond the window, watching the people moving through the city with the brisk impatience of a weekday afternoon. "I've considered it," he answered. "Maybe one day. But he doesn't need me to certify that he's changed. He needs the people he meets tomorrow to be treated better because of what he's learned."
The answer surprised Sarah with its simplicity. She had spent years in banking learning to convert nearly every problem into a form, a rating, or a measurable outcome. Some things still required human judgment, and some relationships could not be repaired by a formal declaration. She understood that David's unwillingness to stage an emotional reunion was not cruelty. It was a refusal to pretend that another person's growth erased the burden of what he had done.