Paying three hundred thousand dollars of debt before being ordered out of the house
Our Elmwood Avenue home was supposed to be in both our names, a joint tenancy we signed when we bought the colonial brick house four years ago. I slid my index finger under the envelope flap, the dry glue giving way with a quiet hiss. Inside was a receipt for a deed filing dated three weeks prior, bearing our parcel number and a filing fee of forty-five dollars.
There was no copy of the actual deed inside, only the transaction number. I wrote the nine-digit sequence on the back of a grocery receipt.
The county clerk office on Main Street smelled of old paper and radiator steam. I waited twenty minutes behind a developer in a mud-splattered jacket before a clerk with a gold nameplate reading Martha waved me forward.
“I need to view the history for parcel four-eight-two, Elmwood Avenue,” I said, handing her the slip of paper.
Martha typed the number into her terminal, the keys clacking in the quiet room. She frowned, squinted at the monitor, and then tapped the screen with the dull end of her pencil.
