Indiana had almost no email.
That was the apology I sent after taking too long to answer an introduction. I had been out of town working on my childhood home, and the weekend had swallowed the inbox.
The house looked different now. In July, my brother and I had been pulling out ruined floors and ceilings. By September, I was back doing plumbing and carpentry. This trip put the work right into the brick exterior.
We cut and opened a doorway through the wall. The photos from the weekend show the brick coming apart, the opening taking shape, and the finished door sitting where a solid wall had been. Inside, the floors and kitchen were moving forward too.
It was still my late mother Gisi's house and still the place where I had grown up. It was also a construction project with the very direct satisfaction of making a new hole in an old wall and getting the door into it.
New York work did not stop while I was away. Reonomy was growing, my calendar was getting crowded, and messages waited until I had a signal again. I came back to the city and started answering them.
The first reply was simple: sorry for the delay, I was in Indiana, believe it or not I had almost no access to email. Could we talk Tuesday?
For a couple of days, the house had won completely. The evidence was a late email and a doorway that had not existed before the weekend.