Paying three hundred thousand dollars of debt before being ordered out of the house
He reached out and touched my arm, his glove cold against my sleeve. “I am going to make this up to you, I promise.”
“I do not need promises,” I said. “I need the corporate ledger to match the bank statements.”
“It will,” he said, his voice rising with that familiar, enthusiastic burst of startup energy. “Once we pay the final seventy thousand next week, the bank will release the corporate guarantees, and we can put this behind us.”
He began raking again, his strokes faster now, piling the leaves onto the center of the blue plastic. I watched him work, his face red from the cold air, wondering how many times he had rehearsed this performance with his father.
“Let us get this pile to the curb before the rain starts,” he said, grabbing two corners of the tarp.
We carried the heavy bundle together, our footsteps silent on the damp lawn.
I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when my phone vibrated against the granite counter. It was a message from David Vance, sent from his office on Cary Street. The attachment was a scanned corporate registry document from the state database, dated three years ago.
