Part 6
“No.”
Brooke’s fingers remained on the yellow tab. “You haven’t looked at the payment.”
“I looked at what secures it.”
“The house has more than enough value.”
“The house is where I live.”
Mike leaned forward. “Mom, please. We can put automatic payments in place. I’m interviewing with two firms, and Brooke has a new staging contract starting next month.”
“You asked me last night for time. You had the paperwork waiting before I answered.”
He sat back. Brooke removed her hand from the page.
I took the chair across from them. “When you moved in, I should’ve asked to see the numbers and set an end date. I should’ve spoken when my things started disappearing.”
Mike lowered his eyes and rubbed a thumb over the table’s old water stain.
“I didn’t,” I said. “But I didn’t put the bed in the garage, either.” I tapped the signature line. “And I’m not putting my house behind your debt.”
Brooke gathered the application into a neat stack. “So that’s it.”
“I can watch Owen two afternoons a week while you take extra work. I will help you find a nonprofit credit counselor, and I will cook during the move. I will not borrow against the house, pay the cards, or cancel the thirty-day notice.”
“Childcare and casseroles,” she said. “That’s your answer to seventy-three thousand dollars.”
“It’s what I can do without risking the house.”
Her chair scraped the floor. “You know what happens if we can’t consolidate this? We sell the car. We default on one of the loans. We may file bankruptcy. My marriage may end.”
“I am sorry.”
“But you won’t stop it.”
“Brooke, I can’t fix your marriage by signing this.”
Brooke looked at Mike. “Say something.”
He drew a breath. “Mom, Brooke didn’t mean—”
The old sentence stopped halfway out. He looked from the loan papers to me, then toward the mudroom door. Through its small window, the garage was visible, my blue quilt folded at the foot of the bed.
“Can you give us until Friday?” he asked.
“My answer will still be no.”
The papers remained on the table all morning. Mike left for an interview, Brooke shut herself in the upstairs office, and I went to the grocery store because we were out of milk again.
Owen came home at three-thirty and found the application before anyone thought to move it. He read only the large words at the top, then listened outside the office door while his parents argued.
He came into the den with his backpack still on. “Mom says we might have to sell the car and I might not play fall baseball.”
“That may happen.”
“Because you said no.”
I folded the towel in my lap. “Because your parents owe money.”
“But you have a whole house.” His face crumpled with anger before the tears came. “You could help and you just don’t want to.”
I wanted to promise his team, his school, his parents at the same breakfast table. Instead, I set the towel beside me.
“I do want to help. I am not signing the house for their debt.”
“Then I don’t want library day.”
He ran upstairs and shut his door hard enough to shake the frame. I did not follow and make him apologize for being angry. His bedroom door stayed closed while I folded the towel again, crooked this time, and left it that way.
At dusk, I heard movement in the garage. Mike sat on the edge of my mattress with the loan papers beside him and his phone in both hands. The orange extension cord lay coiled on the floor.
“Owen thinks I’m doing this to him,” I said.
“I know. He thinks I am too.”
Mike stared at the yellow tab, peeled it from the signature page, and stuck it to his thumbnail. Then he found the credit union’s number and pressed call.
The representative answered. Mike gave his name, said they would not proceed with the home-equity inquiry involving the Ward property, and asked for written confirmation that his request had been withdrawn. His voice shook, but he did not look at me while he spoke.
Brooke had come to the mudroom doorway. When the call ended, she said, “You told me we would fix this.”
“I told you Mom would fix it.”
“You agreed to this.”
“I did. I’m not pretending I didn’t.”
Brooke crossed the garage and peeled the yellow tab from his thumbnail.
“We already lost half the contractor deposit,” she said. “Now you’re throwing away the only loan that could get us out.”
“The deposit was for work we had no right to order.”
“You signed off on every room.”
“I did.”
Brooke folded the tab into a hard little square. “You promised me we would never live the way I grew up.”
“I know. But this was never ours to use.”
“Then don’t leave me holding all of it.”
“I’m not.”
Brooke went upstairs. She came down twenty minutes later with an overnight bag and her laptop case. At the front door, she told Mike she was going to stay with a friend in Dublin for a few days. Owen would remain with him until they had agreed on what to tell him and how school nights would work.
“Don’t call unless it’s about Owen,” she said.
Mike nodded. She turned to me.
“I’ll text before I come back for him.”
“All right.”
The door closed, and Mike stood with his phone hanging at his side.
“You can stay until the date on the notice,” I said.
He looked at me. “You still want me out.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the garage, then down at the phone in his hand.
“All right.”
The next afternoon he called a credit-counseling agency Rachel had recommended and made an appointment. The date on the notice did not change.
On Sunday, I heard the ratchet of a socket wrench in the garage. Mike had stripped the sheets from my bed and was taking apart the frame. The lawn mower had been pushed outside, and each bolt rested in a glass jar so none would be lost. He lifted one end of the headboard, then stopped. “Where do you want it?” “Upstairs,” I said. “By the west wall…”
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