We had been in the Buffkin house for approximately three weeks when Jim Kabuta, the contractor who reinforced our sagging roof, handed me a bill for six hundred and sixty dollars and watched my face fall. He said four words that I had never once put together in that order: “It’s only money.” I told him that was easy for him to say. He told me to look at my wife and my kids. I’m still thinking about what he said. So is my neighbor Bill, who learned it the hard way about a year later.