Two weeks later, I sat behind the glass wall of our conference room while my loan team reviewed the file. Dad’s company, Halbrook Distribution, was thirty days from bankruptcy. On the lobby monitor, my father looked ten years older than I remembered, and beside him sat Mom and Owen, all three dressed as if for a funeral.

My senior analyst, Priya, noticed how long I had been staring. “Do you know these people?” she asked. I gave a small smile. “I did once.” Then she read the final page of the application, and her face drained of color. “Gavin, the personal guarantor listed here is you. Your full name, your signature, everything.” Nobody in that lobby knew my phone number, my address, or where I lived. Yet somehow, my signature was sitting on a $2.5 million debt.