Love After Layoffs novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Second Loan

I tore the envelope open standing at the counter in Brooks's shirt.

The paper inside was thick and cream-colored, with a bank's blue logo across the top.

SECOND LIEN. HOME EQUITY LOAN. $90,000.00.

Borrowers: Janine R. Weller and Justin Doyle.

Property: our house, on our street, in Squirrel Hill.

Closed on the ninth of October.

That was three weeks before he cut my agency and kissed Savannah in a lobby.

The notice said the first payment was past due.

It said fifty thousand dollars had been disbursed to an outside account on the day of closing.

The account ended in 7714.

I turned to the last page.

There, in a box marked BORROWER, was my signature.

It said Janine R. Weller, in long careful loops.

I turned my own hand over under the kitchen light and looked at the calluses on my pen finger.

I don't write loops.

I write Janine Weller in two flat words, with a hard bar across the W.

My mother taught me that on a church bulletin when I was seven.

I have never in my life signed a middle initial.

The room tilted.

"Janine?"

Brooks stood in the doorway in his trousers, barefoot, with his hair flat on one side.

"Come here," I said.

He read it over my shoulder.

He read it the way he read everything, all of it, with his thumb moving down the margin.

When he reached the signature, I heard him stop breathing.

"That isn't yours."

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