Lawrence wrote to me four months later. Not an email. A handwritten letter on plain paper, and it was clear he had started it several times. He said he grew up with nothing, clawed his way into rooms like that ballroom, and had spent forty years terrified of anyone who reminded him where he came from. He said the card was never really about me. I read it twice. Then I wrote back one line: The door was never locked, you just kept standing in front of it.

We rebuilt Lawrence’s headquarters after all. He called Toby himself and asked, and Toby said yes only after I agreed. Lawrence came to the site on the first day, wearing boots that had clearly never touched dirt, and he shook every crew member’s hand. The old notebook letter now hangs framed in Toby’s office. For years I believed that people like me stayed at the edges of rooms. But I learned that worth is not printed on a card. It is poured, beam by beam, into everything you build for someone else.