“Then what.”

And my mother — fifty-four years old, per diem, eleven thousand dollars, seventeen years in a rented apartment — said:

“Give me a job.”

We took three more weeks to build it, and Denise did most of the actual work, because Denise builds things properly.

Laura Davidson is the Director of Nursing at the Davidson Clinic. Four days a week, salaried, benefits, four percent retirement match, and a title that is on the door of the second office and on a name badge she pretended not to care about and then wore to the grocery store.

She earns it. I want to be unambiguous about this, because I know how it looks on paper.