419 by Will Ferguson Read Free Book Online

having packed only an overnight bag, spent most of her days in a flannel nightgown. Laura collected her mom's mail, kept it by the fishbowl in her apartment with a rubber band around it. "The mail can wait," she'd told her mom. But it couldn't.
     
Life insurance. Egg-salad sandwiches. Final notices. In lieu of flowers. The events continued to blur into each other, seemed to happen both at the same time—and separately. And then the ATM at Laura's mall swallowed their mother's bank card and nothing was ever the same.
     
Warren had taken their mother to see Laura, if only to get her out of her flannel nightgown. He'd dropped their mother off at Northill Plaza and she'd stopped by the bank at the mall to withdraw some money—she was planning to take Laura for lunch at the food court. It was a joint account she'd had with her husband, but when she entered her PIN the machine refused to give her any money or even to release the card. It held it hostage instead, with a message that read simply: SEE TELLER INSIDE.
     
Laura's mother fled instead. She took the mallside exit, past Shoppers Drug Mart and the Flight Centre to the lobby of Laura's building, pressed desperately on the buzzer.
     
"Laura, it's Mom. Please come down."
     
Together, they'd walked back to the bank and asked to see the manager. "It's clearly some sort of mistake," Laura said, using the definitive when she knew full well she should have been using the conditional.
     
     
The bank manager was pudgy and young, with Clearasil-pink skin and a tie knotted too tight for the overlap of his neck. He provided a bank statement. It showed a balance of ($189,809.51).
     
"What do these parentheses mean?" she asked, though she already had a sickened inkling.
     
"The what?"
     
"The brackets," she said. "Around the total. Explain those."
     
The bank manager blinked. "That means it's a negative balance.
     
You didn't get the notice?" He turned to her mom. "About the default? On the house loan?"
     
"Loan?"
     
"The house loan. It's like a mortgage."
     
Her mother said, "We don't have a mortgage. We paid our house off years ago."
     
"Yes, you did," said the manager. "That's why your husband was able to arrange a loan. More of a line of credit, really, against the equity."
     
He showed them the paperwork for that as well. "Your husband," he said, sliding the papers across. Your husband. As though that explained everything.
     
Laura shoved the papers right back at him. "My mother didn't sign anything. This is a scam."
     
"Your mother didn't need to sign anything. The house was in your father's name."
     
"Why would the house be in—"
     
But her mother stopped her with a touch on the arm. "I was still in teachers' college when we bought the house," she said. "Back then, property was often in the husband's name. It wasn't unusual."
     
"But it's your house, too," Laura said.
     
"Urn, actually," said the bank manager, "it's our house. The loan is in default." Then: "You should probably get a lawyer."
     
     
Laura could do better than that. "I'm calling my brother," she said, threatening him as though she were seven years old again.
     
"You," she said, "are going to be sorry,"
     
She sat there, staring defiantly at the bank manager, cellphone to her ear. But the days of her brother acting as protector were long gone, and when Warren picked up, he didn't let her get a word in. He'd been having his own runaround with the life insurance company. "They're freezing Dad's payout, ‘pending investigation.'
     
Can you fuckin' believe this?"
     
Laura turned away, lowered her voice, said, "Warren, we're at the bank. You need to come here right away."
     
"Dad took out an extra half-mill in added coverage just a week before the accident. And now the bastards are refusing to cough up any of it! Good thing the house was paid off."
     
As Laura tried to get her brother to listen, even for a moment, her mother asked the manager, "What about our savings?"
     
     

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