This Is Where We Live by Janelle Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

“Interest-only adjustable-rate mortgages,” she said. “The bane of my existence. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had in here in the last few months, panicking because their loans ballooned.”
    “But it’s totally fixable,” Jeremy offered, keeping his voice varnished with a shiny coat of optimism.
    “Define fixable?”
    Jeremy’s smile tightened. “You tell me.”
    “Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to tell you.” Tamra offered a sympathetic smile, revealing red lipstick smudges across what were actually rather rabbity front teeth.
    Claudia leaned in. “Wait. Are you saying we can’t restructure our loan? Get an extension or a waiver or something?”
    “If you like, you can fill out the paperwork for an extension request, and I’ll submit it for processing. But I wouldn’t count on it.” Tamra sounded almost happy about this. Jeremy looked over at Claudia, marveling at this woman’s flippancy. Was the banker enjoying this? It had to be a game; she was a sadist who was taking pleasure in torturing them—just a bit—before she took on the mantle of savior.
    Claudia fumbled with her notebook, flipping back and forth as she tried to read her own cramped notes. “OK,” she said. The confidence in her voice was wavering; she sounded a touch querulous. “Well, what about refinancing? I read that mortgage rates are starting to drop. Maybe we could get a new loan with better terms?”
    Tamra reached up to tuck a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear, nudging it back into her bun with a long glossy nail that had been tipped with a crescent of white. Fussy nails. Jeremy was finding her less attractive by the minute. He looked at his low-maintenance wife—all no-nonsense manicure and sexily disheveled curls and artfully invisible makeup—with a new appreciation. Jeremy wanted to get this over quickly so he could take her home and climb back into bed and spend the afternoon fucking and eating peppermint ice cream and watching old cartoons in the safety of their house.
    “According to our records, we sent you a letter several months ago setting out your refinancing options. Any particular reason why you didn’t take us up on our offer then? You’re already two months behind on your payments.”
    Claudia looked at Jeremy. He felt himself shrinking under the women’s shared gaze, as if by neglecting to read every single piece of mail the bank sent (and it sent so many! disclosure notices and monthly statements and privacy notifications and credit card solicitations!) he had caused this situation. Maybe he had. In fact, over the course of the last anxious week, he had been plagued by the unpleasant suspicion that this current mortgage mess was entirely his fault—he wasn’t exactly a provider , and his approach to bill-paying was best described as a healthy serving of enthusiastic procrastination with a hasty chaser of last-minute panic. It was obvious now that he should have told Claudia when the mortgage ballooned, should have warned her they were missing payments, should never have listened to the gremlin in his head that told him if he ignored the situation it would somehow work itself out. Now, some internal husbandly impulse that he wasn’t previously aware he possessed had kicked in; he felt the need to fix things . One way or another, he would extricate them from this mess.
    “Yeah, there was a mix-up with the mail,” he mumbled. “But we’ve only missed two mortgage payments! Refinancing is still an option, right?”
    Tamra opened a binder and flipped through pages of cramped tables, cross-referencing what she saw there with the information on her computer screen. “No,” she said. “Things are changing rather rapidly in the mortgage industry right now. So that’s not a possibility anymore, at least not for a couple with your financial record. Your credit scores are low. I see you racked up a rather impressive credit card debt two years ago?”
    “That was for my film,”