Ami Palmer feels guilty.
She lives in Clendenin, a community that was ravaged by a historic flood just six months ago.
The inside of her family's home was practically destroyed by a rush of water from the Elk River that overcame much of the town. Their house is still standing, though the walls and century-old floors had to be ripped out and replaced.
In the weeks and months following the disaster, their community was their safety net. Friends, family and neighbors all reached out to help. Palmer couldn't stop thinking, "Why us?"
"We would not even remotely be where we are today if it weren't for the hundreds of people that came to our rescue," Palmer said. "The emotion I feel most now is guilt. I feel so guilty that so many people helped us - why us? There's just so many people still not in their homes. I just think that we must have done something really good at some point to deserve this much help that I can never repay back.
"I tell them how thankful we are, I just don't think they understand."
So she decided to tell them with more than just her words.
Once the family moved back into the home, she painted a wall with chalkboard paint. She had been keeping a list of names of everyone who helped the family get back on their feet, and she wanted everyone who walked in the house to see them. She wrote their names in colorful chalk across the wall in the family room, her script changing for each name.
She can look at each name and tell a story: the man who sent them gift card to Lowe's, the teachers from Parkersburg who bought Palmer decorations for her classroom. Palmer is an elementary school teacher and feared she wouldn't be ready for the start of the school year. At that point, she didn't realize her school, Clendenin Elementary, would close for good.
The "thank you wall," as Palmer calls it, is meant to honor the people who made the recovery possible.
Palmer and her 12- and 13-year-old daughters had left Clendenin that Friday morning in June to go to a horse show in Lexington, Kentucky. Her husband, Derek, stayed behind because he had to work. It started as a normal day.
"It was raining that morning, but it rains all the time. We've lived here 16 years and I've never feared that river, not one time," Palmer said. "It's never even touched the upper part of our yard. My husband called that night and said he didn't know if he was going to be able to get back home."
She thought he was crazy. Then a neighbor who was watching her pets - seven rabbits, two dogs and one cat - called to say she might have to give their dog its seizure medicine early. She wasn't sure she'd make it back at 8 p.m.
"I could never have prepared myself for what I was coming home to," Palmer said. I just thought some water had gotten in the house, it would recede out and we would clean up the floors."
Instead, when the family finally got home Saturday, they found buckets and buckets of mud coating her floors. They saw warped walls where the water had risen several feet. She found ruined wedding pictures, board games and hope chests passed down through generations that couldn't be saved.
Palmer cried every day for four months straight, most days more than once. It was hard to hide the tears from her daughters, but she tried anyway.
"Every time we'd make the decision to commit to rebuilding, we'd get bad news the following day," she said. "We'd commit, put a bunch of money down, then the next day we'd be told we'd have to raise the house three feet. Well, that's another $30,000 we didn't expect.
"The emotional roller coaster of the entire summer was tough."
If it wasn't for the family's structural flood insurance and credit cards, they wouldn't have been able to afford to do much work.
The couple had wanted to grow old in the home together. Palmer said it seemed like paradise when they moved in 2000. Palmer's brother-in-law lived across the street, her husband's best friend lived next door and Palmer could teach at Clendenin Elementary School.
The couple spent years restoring the home. Palmer loved the hardwood floors and hated having to rip them up during the rebuilding process. The floors looked OK after they were wiped off, but crews found mud caked under the floorboards.
Palmer isn't so sure anymore if she wants to stay here forever. Every time it rains, she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach. She pesters her husband to check the weather and he reminds her that the June flooding came from multiple days of heavy rain.
As long as she's here, the wall will be, too.
"I wanted everyone who comes into this house to know that this was not put back by us, that without hundreds of people helping us financially, emotionally, manually, we would not be here," she said.
Reach Jake Jarvis at 304-348-7939, jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, Facebook.com/newsroomjake or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.