Chương 6
“Derek.”
“We thought if we stayed with you for a few months, got stable, maybe everybody could sit down and figure out what made sense.”
“Everybody meaning you, Kelsey, Mom, Dad, and me.”
“Yes.”
“Except four of those people had already discussed my house before the fifth person was invited.”
He did not answer.
“Did you know Dad borrowed thirty-eight thousand dollars for you?”
“I knew they helped.”
“Mom says thirty-eight.”
“She shouldn’t have told you that.”
That sentence clarified more than he intended.
“You knew.”
“I knew some.”
“How much is your total debt?”
“Not this again.”
“Yes, this again.”
“Our personal debt?”
“All of it.”
“That’s not one number.”
“Then give me several.”
He was silent so long I checked whether the call had disconnected.
Finally he said, “I have around twenty-two on cards.”
My stomach sank.
“Kelsey?”
“More.”
“How much more?”
“Thirty-something.”
“On top of the property debt?”
“Some of it came from trying to keep the property current.”
“And the business judgment?”
“Fourteen.”
“Is that included?”
“No.”
I took out a pen.
The numbers began to form a shape on the back of an unopened utility bill.
Twenty-two.
Thirty-something.
Fourteen.
The mortgage-related deficiency or collection amount, still unclear.
Thirty-eight from my parents.
Even if some overlapped, this was not a temporary cash problem.
This was a crater.
“Why did Mom say fifty thousand from me could fix all of it?”
“Because it could clean up the worst parts.”
“For how long?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you owe this much and you don’t have enough income, fifty thousand doesn’t fix the behavior that created it.”
His voice sharpened.
“You love that word.”
“What word?”
“Behavior.”
“I said it once.”
“You always talk like everybody else is a case you’re reviewing.”
“That is not what I’m doing.”
“Yes, it is.”
I stood and walked to the sink, though there was nothing there except my coffee cup.
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you?”
He continued before I could answer.
“Because you would look at me exactly like this.”
“You can’t see me.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
That was the worst part.
There was a version of Derek I had been angry with for years.
The careless brother.
The protected brother.
The charming disaster everybody rushed to rescue.
But beneath that was another person I rarely allowed myself to see.
A man who knew his older sister expected him to fail.
The realization did not make the moving truck acceptable.
It did not make the loan page acceptable.
It simply made my anger less clean.
“I would have helped you find somewhere to live,” I said.
“You said no.”
“I said no to you moving into my house.”
“That was the help we needed.”
“No, that was the help you decided I owed.”
He breathed out.
Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
Then he said, “Kelsey’s parents won’t let us stay with them.”
“Why?”
“Her dad found out she used the house money.”
“What house money?”
Another silence.
“Derek.”
“Some of the refinance wasn’t supposed to go into the studio.”
“What was it supposed to be for?”
“Repairs.”
“What repairs?”
“Roof, foundation, electrical.”
“Were those repairs done?”
“No.”
I closed my eyes.
“So she borrowed against the house for necessary repairs and put the money into the business instead.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“It sounds painfully simple.”
“She thought the studio would start making money before the repairs became urgent.”
“And did you agree?”
“We both did.”
There was no defensive edge in his voice now.
Just exhaustion.
For the first time, he had placed himself inside the mistake without hiding behind Kelsey or Colton or the missing investors.
“What happened to Colton?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Arizona, last we heard.”
“Did anyone sue him?”
“Kelsey talked to an attorney.”
“And?”
“Attorney said collecting might cost more than we’d ever see.”
“Was there fraud?”
“I don’t know.”
“You signed contracts.”
“Some.”
“Kelsey?”
“Some.”
“Colton?”
“Most.”
The proportions were becoming clearer.
They had not simply been victims of one dishonest partner.
They had also made reckless decisions around him.
“Did Mom and Dad know all this?”
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“December.”
The equity line had been recorded eight months earlier.
I did the math.
“That was before December.”
He went silent.
“Derek, when did Dad first give you money?”
“October.”
“So they knew before December.”
“I guess.”
“No.”
I pressed the pen so hard the tip tore the utility envelope.
“You keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Making everyone else the keeper of facts you already know.”
He did not answer.
I looked at the lender sheet again.
“Kelsey got my exact mortgage balance somehow.”
“She probably saw the paperwork.”
“At Mom and Dad’s?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask her.”
“She’s asleep.”
“At eleven in the morning?”
“We were up late.”
“Wake her.”
“Natalie.”
“Wake her.”
He muttered something away from the phone.
I heard movement.
A television.
Then Kelsey’s voice, blurry with sleep.
“What?”
Derek spoke quietly.
There was another pause.
Then he returned.
“She says your mom sent her a picture.”
The room seemed to narrow around me.
“A picture of what?”
“Your closing statement.”
I looked toward the cardboard box near the dining room wall where my closing folder had been stored since move-in.
My mother had not merely seen my paperwork.
She had photographed it and sent it to the woman who was calculating how much could be extracted from my house.
“Send me the message.”
“What?”
“The message from Mom with the photo.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Kelsey does.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is getting ugly.”
“It became ugly when people started running loan numbers using my financial information.”
“You’re making it sound criminal.”
“I’m making it sound exactly like what happened.”
“Nobody forged anything.”
“Good.”
I paused.
“Then sending me the screenshot shouldn’t hurt anybody.”
He became quiet again.
May you like
When he spoke, the anger had returned.
“You don’t get to put everyone on trial just because you finally have something they need.”
