419 by Will Ferguson

Author:Will Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780670064717
Publisher: Viking Penguin
Published: 2012-03-27T07:00:00+00:00

Or jumping off the garage into a pile of leaves he'd just raked.

Laura had spent three weeks with her ankle in a cast after that misadventure. Warren had been the first one to sign his name, with a great flourish of felt marker. It was the same signature he used even today.

The bank had begun foreclosure proceedings on their parents' home. Warren's lawyer had slapped the bank with an injunction—the investigation was ongoing, after all—but it was a stop-gap measure, and Warren knew it. They'd been dealt a losing hand, even if his sister couldn't see it.

"Our mother just got an eviction notice," Laura said. "From her own home!"

"Listen, here's the thing, for Mom to stay there, we're talking a deep six figures, we'd need fifty grand just to get our foot in the door, and even then, we'd be paying the house off for years—at above market value, I might add—and long after Mom was gone, we'd still be on the hook for it, and the thing is, it's not that great a house to begin with."

"It's our family home," she snapped.

"Was," he said. "Was our home. If you love it so much, why don't you buy it? You could move back in, take over the payments.

I realize being a copywriter, or whatever it is you do, doesn't pay much, but you must have some savings, surely."

"I do, but not enough. Not nearly enough, and you know that. You're the one who's supposed to be this big successful businessman."

"I am," he snapped. "The payments on my Escalade alone are probably more than what you pay on your fuckin' apartment."

"It's not an apartment, it's a condo."

"You own it? You don't. You sublease. I helped set that up for you, remember? Call it what you like, it's an apartment. And that's my point. I have expenses that you can't even imagine. I'm already overextended, my assets are tied up, I've got investors breathing down my neck. I can't just pull fifty G from my ass, and I sure as shit can't buy back the house. Mom can move in with us at Springbank."

"What, in the basement?"

"Yes, in the basement. You have a better idea?"

"I do. You could use some of that fabulous wealth of yours to stop our mother from getting kicked out of her own home. You always said you were rich."

"I never said I was rich."

"You certainly act it."

"Not the same as being. It comes down to limited liability partnerships. I set myself up as a senior shareholder when I merged companies, but I should have been paying myself a contract salary instead of dividends, so when the market collapsed—"

"What are you going on about? Speak English.''

"What I'm saying is, I don't have the money. Mom can stay with us if she wants, but the house we grew up in? It's gone."

Laura remembered the board games she and Warren used to play as children. Monopoly. The Game of Life. Snakes and Ladders.

Sorry.

"Rubies," said Laura, her voice hard, sardonic, sad.

"Rubies?"

"We could pull rubies from the stucco," she said.

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