She picked up her phone and called her insurance agent. Cindy was patient with her, but Maja was still near tears by the time she got off the phone. It turned out that the adjuster had missed all sorts of things, misunderstanding how far along they were in the construction process. When Maja explained that they’d had to remove a lot of the damaged materials and fixtures to prevent mold from forming, Cindy clucked sympathetically. “You can certainly appeal the determination,” she said. “You just need to hire an independent adjuster. And it helps if you have all of your receipts. Did you provide those to the adjuster?”

Maja was furious with herself. Why hadn’t she put all of this together before? She felt a fresh wave of rage at the people who had done this to her. They had destroyed her dream, her home, and for what? A beer bash? It was infuriating, and she felt powerless to do anything about it.

She called Ted, and he picked up right away. “We’re going to need to hire our own adjuster,” she told him, “and I’m starting to wonder if we should get our own attorney as well.”

“Let’s hold off on hiring a lawyer. Look, Maja,” Ted said, and then paused.

“Hmm?” Maja said.

“This is just an idea,” Ted finally said, “but hear me out.”

Maja had been looking at the damage estimate for the tenth time, as if studying it over and over would somehow change it. But the tone of Ted’s voice made her give him her full attention. “What is it?” she asked.

“What if we sold the house,” he said, his voice sounding odd. “You know, cut and run.”

“Sell it?” Maja was incredulous. “Ted, that’s crazy. Why would we do that? Besides,” she said, hardly able to believe they were having this conversation, “it doesn’t even have a functional kitchen or bathroom.”

“I know,” Ted said. “It’s a stupid idea. I just thought, you know, maybe we could sell it as is. It’s a great piece of property. A developer or someone might want to work on it. And then later, we can take the insurance money and put it toward another house when everything calms down. This is a lot for us to deal with.”

“Ted, this is the house that we built. We can’t just give up on this because it’s hard.” There was a catch in her voice. “I feel like I’m all alone here.”

“Forget it. Just forget I said anything. It was a stupid idea,” Ted said sharply.