Paying three hundred thousand dollars of debt before being ordered out of the house
He closed his laptop and stood up, walking toward the kitchen without another word.
I sat down at the vintage mahogany dining table, pulling the manila envelope from my briefcase.
I laid the Broad Street bank documents flat on the polished wood, the paper white against the dark grain.
With a slow, deliberate movement, I unscrewed my pen and signed my name on the bottom line.
I had now committed almost my entire net worth to this fight.
The pen was still on the vintage mahogany dining table when the doorbell rang at nine the next morning. I stood up from the dark wood chairs and smoothed my gray wool slacks, straightening my wristwatch before I walked to the door. Evelyn stood on the brick porch, holding a pink cardboard pastry box tied with a thin white string. She wore her tailored beige trench coat, and her three-strand pearl necklace caught the dull overcast light of the autumn morning.
“I brought the almond pastries from the bakery on Cary Street,” Evelyn said, stepping past me into the foyer without waiting for an invitation. “You look like you have not slept in days, Clare.”
