No overtime, no shift, no busted pipe was supposed to touch that time slot.
The morning of, she stood in the doorway with her tiny garment bag and her serious little face.
Hair already slicked back, socks sliding on the tile.
“Promise you’ll be there,” she said, like she was checking my soul for cracks.
I knelt down so we were eye level and made it official.
“I promise,” I said. “Front row, cheering loudest.”
She grinned, finally — that gap-toothed, unstoppable grin.
I went to work floating for once instead of dragging.
By two, though, the sky turned that heavy, angry gray everybody can feel coming.
Around 4:30, the dispatcher’s radio crackled bad news.
Water main break near some construction site, half the block flooding, traffic losing its mind.
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