trying to finish work after dark. He carried a battered leather notebook because the digital ticketing system sometimes failed to capture the details that mattered. If a door stuck only when rain pushed through a northeast-facing window, Daniel wanted that written down, not categorized vaguely as a door issue.
He had once been offered the title of facilities manager. He declined when he learned it would require regular evening meetings and unpredictable travel between regional offices, and the previous year he declined again after Lily had started struggling with bedtime anxiety. Those decisions had limited his raises, though the company still relied on him for tasks more complicated than his formal position suggested. Daniel did not advertise the sacrifices. He only knew that the hour between school dismissal and bedtime was the part of Lily's childhood he could still protect.
The first person he greeted most mornings was Harold Bennett, a security guard in his late sixties who had worked the building's evening shift long enough to know which executives actually stayed late and which simply left their office lights on. Harold had gray whiskers, a stiff left knee, and a habit of bringing homemade peppermints to the front desk. He called Daniel "professor" because Daniel once fixed a broken intercom with a spare component and a length of wire after three vendors had insisted the whole unit needed replacement. The nickname embarrassed Daniel, but he liked the man who used it.
"Morning, professor," Harold said that Thursday, looking up from the visitor log. "Conference room nine is acting like a haunted house again. Lights go off whenever somebody starts discussing quarterly targets."
Daniel grinned. "Maybe the building is offering financial advice." Harold laughed, then lowered his voice to ask whether Lily had recovered from the cold she had suffered the previous week. Daniel said she had, though she was already inventing reasons to stay home and finish her history project.