was twenty-nine years old, single, and living alone in a three-bedroom house in a midsize Ohio city.
I worked as a licensed electrician.
The money was decent.
Not wealthy.
Not even particularly comfortable if something expensive went wrong.
But steady.
I had a mortgage I had been paying for two years, a reliable trade, and until three weeks earlier, $22,000 in savings.
That money mattered.
I had spent four years building it because I hoped one day to buy a larger property, maybe somewhere with a little land.
Then
