“Take the fourteen dollars and let me finish mopping the floor,” I said.

She looked at the wet floor for five seconds without letting go of my wrist.

“The mop bucket’s by the back door,” Patty said.

At one in the morning on Thursday, the only light in the Miller house came from the elastic headlamp strapped across Nate’s forehead.

The heavy electric drill whined loudly against the hard two-inch solid oak wall studs, throwing clouds of fine yellow sawdust across the subfloor.

I sat on an upturned drywall mud bucket in the middle of the living room with thick white athletic tape wrapped around both thumbs.