Maja was right—Louis wasn’t happy about her taking more time off, but he grudgingly gave her the week. On Sunday night, she took the bus down to New Falls to stay with Aneeta. The following morning, the insurance adjuster showed up—on the right day this time—and walked with her through the house, taking pictures and making notes on the damage. He appeared to be just as horrified by the damage a party had caused as Maja was. Looking around and tallying up all the ruined items, she could see what Ted had meant when he’d said that they’d gone a little crazy.

If he’d been worried about what they were spending, she wished that he’d been more up front with her. But she couldn’t really be mad at him. After all, she’d been the one to push for the ever-increasing array of luxury finishes: Carrara marble, a steam shower, a kitchen faucet that turned on and off with a wave of your hand. Her mantra had been, “If we’re going to do it, let’s do it right.” To which Ted would jokingly reply, “And if we’re going to spend our money, let’s spend it all.” Except now Maja was beginning to realize that he hadn’t actually been joking, and she was embarrassed that she had left it all up to Ted and hadn’t kept a closer eye on the budget.

That night at Aneeta’s house, Maja was in an upbeat mood. She felt they were getting back on track. “Maybe this wasn’t the worst thing to happen,” she said to Aneeta. “I mean, now I can go back and fix all the little things that bothered me. I was never really sure about pale gray for the floorboards. I think I’m going to go with something warmer this time around.”

But her good mood lasted only until the next afternoon, when an email came in from Belltown Mutual with a damage estimate attached. Every item was listed out separately, with replacement values and hour estimates she didn’t totally understand. She scrolled through until she found the page with the total. She stared at it for a long moment and tried to do the calculations in her head. The insurance company had only assessed a little over two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage. But her new contractor, and even the police, had put the estimate much, much higher. The marble in the kitchen alone, which all had to be replaced, had cost at least twenty thousand dollars, and that didn’t include all the labor costs to remove the damaged pieces and install the new ones.