Chapter 6
HARPER
My apartment felt colder than usual when I unlocked the door and stepped inside just after ten. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe the chill came from somewhere deeper than the February air seeping through poorly insulated walls and the gap under the door I'd been meaning to weather-strip for months.
I dropped my keys on the counter with a clatter that echoed in the small space, making me flinch. I shrugged out of my jacket and hung it on the hook by the door, the wool fabric rough against my fingers. The coat was starting to pill at the elbows but was still warmer than anything else I owned.
Then I just stood there, staring at the small space I called home.
One bedroom. One bathroom with a shower that only produced lukewarm water on good days.
A kitchenette barely big enough for one person, with appliances older than me and a refrigerator that hummed too loud and never quite got cold enough.
The couch with its faded floral pattern and the coffee table with water rings I'd tried to sand out were both thrift store finds.
A life that looked as precarious as it felt.
Bills were stacked on the kitchen table like evidence of my failures. The envelope from my landlord still sat where I'd left it this morning, propped against the toaster like an accusation. Final Notice was stamped across the front in a red ink that screamed my shame.
I'd avoided looking at it all day. I’d gotten up, showered, dressed, and driven to the boutique without once letting my eyes land on that envelope. I had spent the day trying to look busy in my empty shop while avoiding Miller's Textiles' increasingly angry phone calls.
Three calls yesterday asking if I'd make the Friday deadline. Two more this morning before I'd finally just turned my phone to silent and shoved it in a drawer.
They were going to send it to collections, but my mind was too busy circling other problems to fully panic about that one.
Like the dinner at Connor's and watching him finally stand up to Morgan and kick her out of his house.
Or the way his eyes had found mine across the room afterward, searching, concerned.
About the way my heart had stuttered in my chest when he'd looked at me like I mattered.
Stop it. He doesn't—you can't—just stop.
Now I was alone, with my bills and my failures and the crushing weight of reality that I'd been avoiding for too long.
I moved to the kitchen table, my sock feet silent on the worn linoleum, and pulled out the stack of papers. I spread them across the scarred wood surface under the harsh light of the overhead fixture that buzzed faintly, adding to the headache already forming behind my eyes.
I grabbed a notebook, one of those cheap spiral ones from the dollar store and started writing. My handwriting got messier with each line as panic made my hands shake.
The apartment rent alone was crushing. Three months behind at twelve hundred each, plus this month's payment due in two weeks. Nearly five thousand dollars just to keep a roof over my head.
The boutique lease was worse. Four thousand a month for three months of missed payments, plus the current month Mr. Chen had given me thirty days to cover. Sixteen thousand dollars to save my business.
Then the credit cards. All three were maxed out from buying inventory I couldn't sell, from covering bills when the boutique didn't make enough. Over eight thousand dollars in plastic debt charging me interest I couldn't afford to pay.
The vendor debts kept piling up. Miller's Textiles alone was over four thousand, and they weren't the only ones I owed. Cascade Wholesale, Lansing Manufacturing, Bella's Boutique Supplies. Another six thousand in companies threatening to send me to collections if I didn't pay.
Even my car payment had fallen behind. Two months at three hundred forty each, and my Honda was making that grinding noise that probably meant I'd need new brakes soon.
I pulled out my calculator with trembling fingers and added it all up even though I already knew the answer would be devastating.
Thirty-six thousand and eighty dollars. The number stared back at me, impossible and real all at once.
I checked my bank account on my phone even though I'd checked it this morning. Twice. The number hadn't changed, wouldn't change, no matter how many times I refreshed the screen.
Five hundred thirty-two dollars and fifty-three cents. And I had a three-hundred-forty-dollar insurance payment due Wednesday for the boutique. Which would leave me with one hundred ninety-two dollars to somehow survive on until…when? Until what magical influx of money appeared?
Okay. Think. What can I sell?
I flipped to a new page, my handwriting getting even messier as panic clawed up my throat.
My car was a 2015 Honda Civic with a hundred forty thousand miles, needed new tires, and made that weird grinding noise when I braked. Maybe worth eight thousand if I was lucky and found a desperate buyer. But then how would I get to work? How would I restock inventory or make deliveries?
The boutique inventory was my only real asset.
I'd done a count last week while avoiding customers I didn't have.
Current retail value maybe fifteen thousand if I sold every single piece at full price, which would never happen.
Realistically, liquidation value? Maybe eight thousand.
But if I sold it all, I'd have no business.
My personal belongings were pathetic enough to make me laugh, except nothing was funny anymore.
A pearl necklace, two rings, and a bracelet from my grandmother were worth maybe five hundred in total if I could find a buyer who didn't lowball me.
My laptop was five years old and barely functional, maybe three hundred dollars?
My phone with its cracked screen, two years old, maybe two hundred.
I added it up with shaking hands. Seventeen thousand if I sold literally everything. If I gave up the boutique and my ability to work and every possession that had meaning.
Still nineteen thousand dollars short.
And then I'd have nothing. No home, no business, no transportation, no belongings except the clothes on my back. Just debt that would follow me forever, ruining my credit, destroying any chance at a future.
There has to be something. There has to be a way.
I stared at the numbers until they blurred together, my vision swimming with tears I refused to let fall.
I ran calculations over and over, trying different combinations, different sacrifices.
Sell the car but keep the boutique inventory.
No, that still left me twenty-seven thousand short.
Sell the inventory but keep the car. Twenty-eight thousand short.
Sell everything and then what? Live on the street while still owing nearly twenty thousand dollars?
The math didn't work. No matter how I rearranged it, sliced it, tried to make it fit, the numbers didn't add up. I was drowning, and I couldn't see a way out.
My phone buzzed on the table, the vibration loud against the wood. I grabbed it automatically, then froze when I saw the screen.
Unknown
Still thinking about our offer? The clock is ticking, Ms. Walsh.
Armand. Or whoever the hell was behind those threatening loan offers that felt more like extortion with every passing day.
My hands shook as I typed back a response, my fingers hitting the wrong keys twice before I managed to spell it out.
Not interested.
I turned my phone face-down on the table like that would make the threat disappear, like I could ignore it into nonexistence.
I’d figure it out myself. I had to.
But the card was still there, wasn't it? Armand's business card that I'd thrown in the trash at the boutique. The one with just a phone number embossed in elegant script. No company name. No address. Nothing legitimate about it at all.
I pushed back from the table, suddenly unable to sit still, and paced the small living room. Ten steps to the window, turn, ten steps back to the kitchen. The apartment felt too small, the walls pressing in, the air too thick to breathe properly.
My grandmother's voice echoed in my head, something she used to say when I was little and facing problems that felt insurmountable. When you can't see the path forward, sometimes you just have to trust that it's there.
But I couldn't see any path. Not forward, not back, not anywhere except down.
By 1:15 AM, I'd accomplished nothing except giving myself a pounding headache and a deep sense of despair that sat in my chest like a stone. The bills were still unpayable. The debt was still insurmountable.
I gathered the papers into a pile, organizing my failure into a neat stack, and shoved them into the kitchen table drawer where I kept all the things I didn't want to look at.
The business plan I'd written three years ago was in there too, full of optimistic projections and dreams that hadn't come true.
Evidence of everything I'd built and lost.
My fingers hovered over the worn folder containing those carefully typed pages.
What good was a three-year-old business plan now?
I'd followed it religiously at first—hit every milestone, stayed on budget, did everything the small business books told me to do.
And still ended up here, drowning in debt with loan sharks circling and my landlord's eviction notice burning a hole in my pocket.
Maybe this was a sign. Maybe I wasn't meant to be a business owner. Maybe some people were just destined to fail no matter how hard they tried, and I'd been deluding myself thinking I could be one of the success stories.
Even if I somehow clawed my way out of this hole—sold my car, took money from Anna or Connor—what made me think it wouldn't happen again?
Another slow season, another unexpected expense, or another month where the numbers just didn't add up.
I'd be right back here in a year, two years, five years, having wasted everyone's time and money proving what I apparently already knew.
That I wasn't good enough. That I'd never be good enough.
The apartment was cold. I could see my breath when I exhaled, little clouds forming in the air.
I moved to the ancient thermostat on the wall and turned it up from sixty to sixty-eight even though I could barely afford the heating bill.
At least I could be warm while I contemplated my complete and utter failure as a human being.
But I also couldn’t afford to freeze to death.
I headed toward my bedroom, every muscle aching with exhaustion that went bone-deep. Maybe sleep would help. Maybe in the morning, I'd see a solution I couldn't see now through the panic and despair.
Yeah, right.
I changed into my soft flannel pajama pants with faded stars on them and a thin gray t-shirt that had been washed so many times the fabric was wearing through at the seams. I brushed my teeth in the tiny bathroom, avoiding my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror.
I didn't want to see the dark circles, the hollowness in my cheeks from skipping meals to save money, or the exhaustion that had become permanent.
I climbed into bed at 1:28 AM according to the alarm clock on my nightstand, my only companion in the dark. The sheets were ice cold, and I pulled the blankets up to my chin, curling onto my side in a futile attempt to get warm.
But sleep wouldn't come.
My mind raced, circling the same problems over and over like a dog chasing its tail. Debt. Bills. Eviction notices. Mr. Chen's sympathetic but firm voice echoing in my head: I can't carry your debt any longer, Ms. Walsh.
I stared at the ceiling, watching shadows move across the water-stained plaster as cars passed on the street below.
The patterns shifted and changed, headlights creating ghosts that danced and disappeared.
My eyes burned but I was too wired to close them, too afraid of what nightmares might be waiting.
You're stronger than this.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, the vibration startlingly loud in the quiet room.
I grabbed it, my heart already pounding, already knowing it wouldn't be good news. It never was anymore.
Unknown
Last chance, Ms. Walsh. Accept help, or accept consequences.
My hands tightened around the phone, the plastic case digging into my palms as I read it again. Consequences. What did that even mean? What were they threatening?
Another buzz. Another message that made my stomach drop.
Unknown
We're not going to ask again.
I turned off my phone completely. Just held down the power button until the screen went black, until the constant anxiety of waiting for the next threat could stop, at least for tonight.
Then I laid back down, pulled the blankets tighter around myself like armor against the cold and the fear, and closed my eyes.
Sleep, when it finally came, was restless and thin. Fractured with dreams about drowning, about being pulled under by invisible hands. About calling for help but making no sound, my voice stolen by water that filled my lungs and dragged me down into darkness.