In 1997, my older son, Andrew, was 9 years old. He had been a sweet, golden baby and a somewhat taciturn toddler. At nearly 4, he had disappeared into an autistic trance -- it happened in an instant, as if I'd become distracted for a moment and someone had snatched him out of his own body while I wasn't looking. I spent years afterward in a frenzy of terror and perpetual movement, seeking out new therapies to help him, reading to him...anything that might turn the key and release him from wherever he'd gone.

In the parking lot of a school down the street from the blogger's house, I taught Andrew to ride a bicycle. He was 6 years old. That, too, was a day of gray skies and, eventually, a cold, driving rain. I was wild that he learn, certain the activity of "cross-patterning" -- moving his legs in circles, one and then the next -- would help cure him. When the storm began in earnest, my husband came to the school to retrieve us; he found Andrew crying, me hoarse from having yelled again and again: "Pedal! You've almost got it. Just keep pedaling!!" Jim took us both by the shoulders and led us home, wrapped us in blankets, then went back for the bike.

By 8, Andrew had emerged about halfway. He was sleeping soundly for the first time in years. He could bicycle, write his name, and answer simple questions. But he remained aloof, distant, different. Early in spring of '97, I took a new tack. He needed space, I decided. And nature. We were living on the sleepy edge of Minneapolis, in a neighborhood where people tended to stay in their homes for 30 years; there was no vibrancy here, nothing new to stimulate him. While the boys were in school, my 2-year-old daughter and I began riding around in the leather opulence of a real estate agent's Lincoln, looking at houses.

It was March when I found one that seemed perfect. A sprawling four-bedroom ranch, it sat on the edge of a marsh and had, I imagined, at least 200 species of animals and insects in the backyard alone. What's more, it was in a school district renowned for its work with autistic children. I told my husband I wanted to buy it and he agreed, sight unseen. "You should look at it," I insisted. And though he was exhausted after a day spent driving from copy shop to copy shop, peddling paper and ink, making small talk though it was not his nature, he did. But his opinion seemed completely unaffected by a tour of the house and grounds and his words remained the same: "If you think it's the right thing to do, we'll do it."

Jim was a carpenter when I met him. But by the time child No. 2 arrived, we'd both glimpsed the lean life ahead of us if he continued working for an hourly wage. There were two choices: He could get a better-paying job, or I could go to work. When Andrew was diagnosed, all thoughts of the latter disappeared; I would be needed at home, to organize his schedule and research new approaches to autism, implement diets, go to doctor appointments, monitor homework, and meet with teachers to discuss his "individualized education plan." Jim took a sales job and began wearing a sport shirt and tie. I started a small business writing from home, earning around $500 a month -- grocery money.

When the house on the marsh presented itself, it seemed like the next logical step. My parents lived in a large home in the suburbs, Jim's in an even larger home on the posh outskirts of a small city. Growing up as a family seemed to require this move. And so, just as the Bug-man described, we put our little house on the market and found it was such a hot commodity -- a fairly well-maintained older home in a nice neighborhood near Minneapolis -- there were people calling even as the listing hit the MLS. The blogger and his wife were the first in, as the result of some favor brokered between our agent and theirs. They bid within hours and the deal was sealed with a single showing.

Then Jim lost his job.

It was a few weeks after the contracts were signed -- both for our house and for the upgrade I'd selected. My swarthy husband came home with a face nearly as pale as his crisp, white shirt. "They're closing the Minneapolis office at the end of the week," he told me. And we both sat, stunned, looking furtively at the phone.

Eventually, it was I who called the realtor to ask what our options were. We could get out of the purchase without difficulty, he said; in fact, we had to. We no longer qualified to buy something new. But our current house? I asked. "That's a done deal," he said. "You sold non-contingent. It's theirs."

The man of the leather-upholstered Lincoln seemed magnificently unimpressed with our predicament: You lose a job, you find another, his attitude seemed to transmit. You go broke, you get back up again. Just hold on and wait for the next big score. He was a player. My husband wasn't. The truth was Jim had loathed his job from the very beginning. He missed working with his hands and hated wearing a tie. For a brief time, he seemed relieved, even as we were preparing to be homeless. Then the panic set in.

Call the deal off! I wanted to scream at our real estate agent. Tell these people what happened. We have three children, one with autism. They're a childless couple living in an apartment with nothing to lose, they'll understand!

And I did say something of the sort. Calmly, I hope. I offered to give the couple back their earnest money and then some. To pay their rent for a couple months in compensation. I asked our agent to make the case, and he claimed that he did.

"They're not going for it," he said, and shrugged. "Can't blame them. Legally, the house is theirs. And they want it."

I asked for a couple months -- months during which we would pay their expenses. If we could just delay the closing, I was sure Jim and I could figure something out. But again, the answer was an unconditional no. They had given notice on their apartment, I was told, and it had been rented to someone else. Yes, there probably was another unit available in their building, but they didn't want to go through the hassle of moving twice. The closing would take place on schedule. We were to be out of the house on the agreed-upon date or they would take legal action.

To the end, I kept believing there would be an 11th-hour reprieve. Even as we packed, I was listening for the phone, hoping the couple would call to say, "We've been thinking it over. We just can't do this to you. Let's work something out." But that call never came. And on that very wet day in late April, we moved most of what we owned into storage and took off in our minivan, with the things we used daily -- a coffeepot, dictionary, socks, a small portable TV -- piled haphazardly in back. Our plan was to hunker down for a few weeks in the empty house of a friend of a relative who would charge us extortion-level rent. After that, we had no idea.

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