Chapter 12: A Line of Credit With a Pulse

I took the envelope.

My hands were steady, and that frightened me more than if they had shaken.

The letter was two pages long.

It named the borrowers, Dane Corbin and Sierra Sutton, and below them, in a smaller box, a guarantor.

Bethany Holzer.

My signature sat at the bottom of the second page in blue ink.

I had signed it at his kitchen counter in April with a pen he handed me.

It was the same night I'd transferred the money.

"How much?" I said.

"Sixty-two thousand on the mortgage," Sierra said.

"If he stays three months behind, the bank can call it. They come to the guarantor first."

"To me."

"To you. You don't even have to be in default for them to start the paperwork."

I read the date on the notice again.

I thought of Dane in my doorway, holding my wrist, and telling me I would let it go.

He hadn't been worried about me letting it go.

He had been counting on it.

"When did you find out my name was on this?" I asked.

"Last Tuesday, when the letter came. I opened it because it had both our names."

Her voice cracked.

"He said it was nothing. Then he said I shouldn't have opened his mail. Then he took my phone."

She turned her wrist over.

The bruise was four fingers wide, yellow around the edges and purple in the middle.

"He did that?"

"He didn't mean to," she said, and then she laughed once, and it was an awful sound.

"That's what I told myself for about a day."

I didn't say anything.

She took a phone out of her coat, an old one with a cracked screen.

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