Chapter 10: The Longest Night
For the next eighteen days, the lights inside the Miller woodshop never went out.
David and Amanda worked in alternating shifts. When David slept from midnight to six in the morning, Amanda operated the mortising machine and hand-scraped the oak seat planks. When Amanda slept from six to noon, David assembled the heavy trestle legs and pinned the joints with white oak dowels.
Neighbors from the street began noticing the continuous puff of woodsmoke from the chimney.
On the tenth day, Mr. Henderson, the retired shop teacher from down the road, walked in wearing his coveralls and picked up a sanding block without saying a word.
On the twelfth day, two of Frank’s former colleagues from the water department arrived with their own toolboxes, helping haul three-hundred-pound oak slabs from the truck into the assembly bay.
The shop became a hive of generational solidarity.
The air was thick with the rich, clean aroma of fresh oak shavings, hot coffee, and the rhythmic *thud-clack* of wooden mallets striking timber.
Amanda worked until her back felt like it was encased in iron, until her fingers were so stiff from clamping that she had to soak them in warm epsom salt water every morning.
Yet, as she worked, she felt a profound, exhilarating joy that no gallery opening had ever provided.
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She was no longer performing for the applause of strangers. She was building something real, something that would shelter generations of citizens long after her name was forgotten.
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