“I regret what brought me here,” I said.

“I don’t regret what we’ve built since.”

In the months that followed, my job continued to grow.

I hired two planners, helped redesign a training program, and began saving toward a small house in my own name.

Silas and I agreed we could share our lives without erasing the things we had each built.

We spent weekdays where our work required and weekends where we wanted, sometimes at the cabin, sometimes in Charlotte, sometimes in neither place.

The Langford factory became a separate chapter of my life.