The underside of the 15-passenger van started screaming halfway down a hill in Western Massachusetts.

They were fifteen minutes from a chocolate factory. On schedule. On mission.

The noise did not belong.

What followed wasn’t heroic or efficient. It was an awkward stop in a place they didn’t expect to be, a handful of small exchanges, and a day that slowly began to feel different than the one we had planned.

Some inconveniences interrupt you.

Others expose something you didn’t know you needed.