That night, the house was quiet in the way it only ever was after delivery day. Janet’s note waited under a plate of foil-covered meatloaf, her handwriting looping the way it had since high school: Gone to my sister’s. Rest. She knew better than to ask for stories I wasn’t ready to tell. I ate with the radio humming static in the background and thought about how quickly a man can go from laughing at an old truck to standing beside it like he’s at a graveside. Not with satisfaction—grief burns that out of you early—but with a tired kind of hope I didn’t like to admit I still had.

In the workshop, the next twelve chairs were already waiting in pieces along the back wall, cherry boards marked in pencil, edges rough and full of promise. I stood in the doorway without turning on the light, letting my eyes adjust to the outlines I knew by heart: the bench where Sarah had stood on her little step stool, the pegboard where her favorite chisel still hung, the curls of sawdust in the corner that never quite swept clean. She would have loved the Lamborghini story, not because a rich man felt small for once, but because he’d chosen not to stay that way. “See?” she would have said, pleased but not surprised. “Grain doesn’t lie.” Wood, people, it was all the same to her: given enough pressure and enough time, the truth always showed.

So I keep building. Every mortise and tenon, every curve of every rocker, is another month she stole back from a diagnosis and handed to me to spend on other people’s kids. Somewhere in Tampa tonight, a man who once blocked in an old truck is paying for twelve chairs he’ll probably never sit in. Somewhere else, a child who has lost more than anyone should is going to fall asleep in a rocker with my daughter’s name on it. That’s the bargain I’ve made with the world: I give away the weight I can’t carry, one chair at a time, and drive home lighter than I left. The miles pile up on the truck, the paint keeps fading, and the engine still catches on the third try. As long as it does, I’ll keep hauling honey-colored wood and brass plates down to that children’s home, proving Sarah right over and over again: most people, given the right moment, will show you what they’re made of.