When Maya needed braces, Elise negotiated a payment plan while I sat in the waiting room imagining disaster.

She had spent years teaching elementary school, and she could look at a confusing situation without demanding an easy answer.

“We need to call Mr.

Bennett tomorrow,” she said.

“Money in a suitcase isn’t the same thing as money we can use.”

I sat down opposite her.

We had a mortgage balance of eighty-two thousand dollars, a leaking upstairs bathroom, and a college acceptance letter that would likely arrive with a price far beyond what we’d saved.

Three hundred thousand dollars could change our lives.