There are nights when life hands you two urgent things at once: one small and personal, the other business-sized and loud, both needing hands. Those nights teach you about delegation, about who you trust, and about how love shows up in practicality.
It began with the weather. A thunderstorm rolled in the way summer storms do—fast, theatrical, the wind doing little rehearsals with the treetops before the real applause. We’d stayed late at the site that evening, finishing edgework on a second-floor frame and pulling tarps over exposed plywood. Mateo and Jonah had joked about the forecast while I counted nails into a small cup and Mark argued with a supplier over an ETA. The radios in crew trucks crackled with static, then quiet. Then rain came like a forceful hand.
We hustled to secure wha
