This is the photograph the whole story is written around.
That joy — right there — is what sparked everything that follows.
Back in 2007, I was flipping houses in Oklahoma. What I was doing was simpler and quieter and, I believed, unbreakable.
Oklahoma's housing market had always been dependable. Not flashy — dependable. Steady ground, and for a man building a life for a wife and two young children, steady ground was the whole point.
There is a specific satisfaction that comes from a system that works. My father understood this. His father understood it. I understood it. This was not naïveté. It was the operating principle of a man who paid his bills on time, maintained his credit, and trusted that those things would be honored when it counted.
Buy low. Clean up and remodel. Sell high.
A grandmother and her grandson, in a home that had stood thirty-five years.
This is exactly what the system was supposed to protect.
This simply cannot be
the world I leave them.