Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [15]
“Can I help you?” I didn’t know if I was supposed to call him officer or sheriff or what. I mean, it wasn’t like I welcomed the law into my home every day of the week.
“Are you Mrs. Cooper?”
“Why, yes. Is something wrong?” A rhetorical question if ever there was one.
“Ma’am, I understand from your housekeeper here that your husband’s funeral was this afternoon and I know this probably seems like terrible timing, but I’m here to serve you with papers. The bank is foreclosing on your house for nonpayment of the mortgage.”
“What?”
“Yes, ma’am. You are almost a year in arrears. And there’s three big trucks outside from the D&D Building in New York? Your decorator sent them. Nonpayment of bills. Seems they want all your furniture, too. Except your mattresses—the bedbug thing, you know. And basically they’re gonna take anything else they might be able to sell at auction to recoup their losses. Except for the chandeliers and the appliances. An electrician’s coming tomorrow for that stuff.”
“What are you saying?”
“Except your clothes. You can keep your clothes and linens, too. Did I mention that?”
“No.”
“I’m real sorry about this. You’ve got forty-eight hours left to vacate the premises yourself.”
“Forty-eight hours? Are you serious? Mark? He can’t be serious, right? There must be some mistake! This is a horrible mistake!”
Mark took the papers from the sheriff and started looking them over.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, “apparently this is your third notice. Addison must have known. He must have known about all of this!”
“He did know,” Dallas, Addison’s accountant, said. “I’ve been trying to hold them off for a while. I mean, I told them . . .”
We all stopped and stared at Dallas. I always thought he was a lightweight, now I knew why.
“Which is why he left first,” Patti said. “Asshole. He might have said something besides I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t Addison tell me?”
“Because he was a coward?” Patti said.
Mark said, “Officer, have a heart here. There has to be some way to do this another day, given the circumstances and the weather . . . ?”
“Believe me, sir, I’m not happy about this, either. I’m really sorry, I mean, the lady here just lost her husband and all. Makes me feel like a monster.”
“You sort of are,” Alice said.
“Shut up, Alice,” Russ said.
“Oh, my God,” I said and sank into a chair. “Oh my God! I’m broke! I’m ruined!”
“No, you’re not,” Patti said. “We’ll figure this out, Cate.”
“Mom!” Sara almost screamed. “What are we gonna do?”
“You might try getting a real job,” Alice mumbled, not too quietly.
“Alice!” Russ said and gave her his most fearsome look.
The next few hours were completely unbelievable. After these burly men wrapped my dining-room chairs in plastic wrap and paraded them out, I couldn’t stand anymore. I felt sick, physically sick. It was too much. I mean, I had said about a zillion times that I wanted a simpler life, sure, but surely there was an easier and more dignified way to get that, wasn’t there? Holy shit, holy hopping hell, holy hell. Be careful what you wish for! And it wasn’t like I hated everything in the house. Was this really happening? There were many things—rugs, paintings, lamps—that I completely adored and the thought of losing those things was wrenching. And losing everything and especially like this was so unbelievably shocking, I was reeling, just reeling, still not understanding what was really happening.
Patti said,