CHAPTER 1
Idrop my purse on the chair at the dining table and grimace at the pile of dishes in the sink. The house seems deserted, but it’s the middle of the day. Mom’s at work, Anne better be at school, and my little brother is probably hiding somewhere.
He’s twenty and mom still hasn’t made him get a job. Oh, the luxury of being the baby boy of the family.
But the quiet is nice. I open the fridge and pull out a can of the off brand cola no one else will touch and sit down at the table, pulling out my laptop.
The thing is old enough it takes a few minutes to power on, but when it does, I immediately log in to make this month’s mortgage payment and click through all the nonsense prompts, ignoring the offers and attempts to get me to give friends and family debt for a measly five hundred dollars.
Dad never should have bought this house.
He was adamant that we had to be close to the training gym… he was certain that my career was going to make all our dreams come true.
Dad bought when the market was cheap as hell, but he re-fied when the interest rates were too high and the taxes just keep going up each year. We were upside down in the place before he died, and mom refuses to sell or move and rent it to someone else…
It’s where dad wanted us. Just because he’s gone, doesn’t mean anything has changed.
She would have defaulted on the place if Phantom’s ad hadn’t shown up at the right time.
But I am so close to getting it paid off.
The remaining balance pops up and my heart seizes. My skin feels like it’s covered in prickles and I can’t breathe.
“No.”
I stare at the numbers for too long… as if they’ll magically change to where they should be.
What had been in the low five digits before now shows an ugly $768,880.
“No, no no…” I click through to the information screen.
The interest rate is almost at eight percent and the loan term started…
She refinanced the house.
She refinanced the house.
The old clock ticks loudly in the back room and I stay perfectly still.
If I don’t move, I won’t throw up.
Deep breaths don’t help.
I need answers.
My hands tremble as I pick up the phone.
She answers on the third ring. “Jennifer! Are you back?”
“Mom?” I pull the phone away from my ear when someone cheers too loudly. “Where are you?”
“Hawaii!”
“What?”
She sounds a little drunk and the music in the background makes she think she’s in a bar.
“What are you doing in Hawaii?” A dreadful understanding starts to creep across my skin.
“We deserve a little treat.”
The silence of the house makes more sense. Anne and Jeremy are with her.
“You went to Hawaii without me?”
She huffs, instantly defensive. “You go on all your trips without us.”
“Business trips, mom. I go to work, not to party.” I bite my tongue and close my eyes, and cling to the foolish hope it was just an error from the bank. “How are you paying for the trip?”
“I’m trying to have a good time. I don’t want to talk about money.”
“Mom!”
Huffing again, she says, “Why do you sound upset. I just refinanced the house again. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. We were almost free and clear.”
“And then we would have had to pay taxes and insurance,” she makes an ugly noise. “Now we don’t have to.”
“Yes, we do, it’s just wrapped up in the mortgage payment.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and remember Coral’s comment about not being able to get her horse ranch because she didn’t have a way to prove her money was actual earnings. “How did you even get the bank to do it?”
“They saw our payment history and they knew we’d be able to pay it back.”
“No, mom. They saw my payment history. I can’t…”
“Nonsense.” She cuts me off, her words suddenly sharply sober. “You’ve been doing it. You can keep doing it.”
Exhaustion makes me lean back against the wall and I ask a question I don’t really want the answer to. “Besides the trip, what else is the money going to?”
How is she going to spend her seven-hundred thousand dollars? And how much of it is left that I can possibly dump back into that loan?
“Anne had her school bills,” she says, and before I can ask what happened to her scholarships, she continues, “and you know Jeremy has always wanted that car.”
Car… what car?
Oh my God.
“You refinanced the house so that Jeremy could have Ferarri? Where’s he even going to park it? How is he going to insure it?”
“I’m building a garage. And it’s not that much more a month. You’ll figure it out.”
“Mom. I can’t pay for this.”
“What are you talking about?” Her voice sours. “Of course you can. All that money we invested in you and you wasted it—”
“I got injured. I didn’t quit.”
She makes a disgruntled noise. “Don’t interrupt me. It’s rude. I raised you better than that. We’ll talk about this when we get back.”
I’m probably “ruining her fun” and she’ll probably expect me to repay her for that too.
“When will you be home?”
“Next Monday.”
I assume she doesn’t mean tomorrow. There’s another cheer and she says a hasty goodbye before she hangs up on me.
“Fuck.”
I throw my phone across the room, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor and press my hand to my mouth because I don’t want to throw up.
I weep instead.