Twenty days was nothing.
Twenty days was everything.
I learned this in the specific way you learned things that were both simultaneously true — by living inside them and finding that the contradiction didn't resolve, it just became the texture of each morning.
The bakery helped. The bakery always helped. The West Village opening was close enough now that every day had a concrete shape — a decision to make, a problem to solve, a detail that needed managing before the one after it could be addressed. Renee and I were at the site every afternoon and the Cobble Hill location every morning and somewhere in between we were planning a launch event that was, by Renee's spreadsheet, twelve days away.
Twelve days after that — nothing. Just after.
I focused on the twelve.
Monday Jade came to th
