We went through distant stretches. Our home got quieter after my daughter, Sophie, left for college. But I believed silence was simply what happened when a marriage matured.

I thought love had settled into routine. Looking back, I understand I had settled into service.

Daniel and I met twelve years earlier at a community fundraiser in Raleigh. I managed operations for a physical therapy clinic. He had recently left a corporate sales job and was trying to build a residential renovation business.

He was charming then — not in the polished way he later became, but funny, slightly nervous, always carrying sheets of graph paper covered in floor plans.

He talked about restoring old houses instead of replacing them with identical modern boxes. On our third date, he drove me through an older neighborhood near Five Points and pointed at a boarded-up Craftsman.

“People see rot,” he said. “I see what it could be.” I liked that answer.