By the end of the first day, the skin at the back of my neck felt cooked through.
My shoulders had cycled from sore to numb and back to sore again, which was somehow worse than either state alone. Every time I bent to grab another bundle of shingles, my lower back pulled tight in the specific way of a muscle that has been asked for more than it planned to give. The pitch was steeper than most residential roofs I had worked in college, and the July heat sat over the neighborhood like a lid placed deliberately over something that needed to stay contained.
I told myself I was lucky to know what I was doing.
That had always been the script with my family. Audrey is capable. Audrey is practical. Audrey can figure it out. My parents had been saying some version of that for years, but not the way people say it when they are proud of you. More the way they say it when they are relieved, the particular relief of people who have identified the person in the family who can be counted on to step in, so they never have to examine how much stepping in they have come to expect.
I had done the preparation properly. Two full weekends measuring and mapping before I touched a single shingle. I calculated the slope, counted how many sheets of decking I would need if I found rot beneath the surface, priced every component of the job: underlayment, nails, drip edge, flashing, ridge caps, the works. I called an old contractor I had worked with years ago just to verify current labor rates. He laughed when I told him the square footage of the house.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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