The Niggle That Dismantled My Perfectly Good Life

March 2000. I was standing in my jewelry workshop in George, South Africa, taping a "LIQUIDATION SALE" sign to the window.

My hands were shaking. Not from fear, exactly — from the particular kind of tremor you get when you're about to do something that makes perfect sense to your gut and absolutely none to anyone who knows you.

I had a profitable business. A client list I'd built from nothing after my first collapse at 29. A reputation in a small coastal town where reputation is currency. I'd clawed that store back from a brutal divorce, taken on every cent of debt, rebuilt it alone, and made it more successful than it had ever been with my ex-husband running the sales floor.

And I was dismantling it. Piece by piece. Because of a niggle.

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