Heirlooms, page 24
I sat straight up, adrenaline and revulsion coursing through me.
“Intelligence level is still sometimes used in the United States to determine who gets rationed medical treatment. Parents often have to apply to be guardians of their own children to ensure treatment after adulthood. Sometimes other guardians take advantage and fleece those they are supposed to protect instead.”
I shook my head. “Why don’t we hear more about this?”
“I don’t know. There’s a firm in Seattle, a part of a larger, national firm that advocates for and represents clients with developmental or intellectual disabilities. I already emailed them to see if I could come and talk about the kind of work they do.”
I didn’t hide my surprise. “You mean . . . as a profession?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking and praying. Turns out, maybe I do want to help people get out of trouble. The kind they got into through no action of their own, but for which they need help to get out.” She looked up. “I think that was why your gran said to hurry. So I’d see the strength my halmoni had and draw from it as I faced the next bar exam. Take her legacy and run with it.”
“Take your heirloom and give it the taste of your hands.” I scooted next to her and hugged her. “And maybe so your halaboji would have your back.”
“For sure.” She shook her head slowly. “All those years volunteering at Special Olympics. Now we know why,” she said. “Our grandmothers were serving in honor of Mi-Ja. I wish I would have paid closer attention.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure. I have only a few weeks more to study for that test. I have to focus on that first and then decide what comes next.” She looked up with a firm, determined look on her face. “I care about passing the exam now. I really, really care about passing so I can honor her legacy. I mean, she could have returned to Korea, but she chose to stay and build a new life. For herself. For us. For me.”
I nodded. “This is your inheritance. I know your halmoni would be proud of you. And your halaboji. I am.”
“I’m running with it, but not telling my dad. If I pass the bar, everything will work out for me. And—” she smiled—“now you get to keep your house and your land, as you promised your gran!”
We sat together in the quiet.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
She put her fingers to her lips and pointed at the attic.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When the last set of roofers came to quote, they pointed out that it wouldn’t be long before the garage and barn needed roofs, too. The pleasure and pain of a property rounding in on one hundred years. A jealous mistress, wanting my time and money—money I didn’t have—to keep her afloat. However, I was prepared to fight. “Do you have a payment plan?” I asked. Yes, they’d said. But the rates were extraordinarily high. Was there another way? There was. That home equity loan.
“I need at least ten thousand dollars, but there’s more available on that loan,” I told Grace. “With the money I’ll have coming in from leasing the acreage next year, I should be more than able to cover the additional payment.”
“Did you get your name on the account as a signer?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Go get your name as a signer on the account,” she said. “Then you can write the check to the roofers. Just bring the probate document, the new title, and the will to the bank, and you’ll be set. It’s been almost four months since Gran’s death, so it’s a good time to resolve that detail, too.”
So on a beautiful, mid-July Friday morning, I headed a few miles south to Coupeville, whistling cheerfully, knowing that soon my home would be snug and dry.
My brakes squealed as I pulled in and parked. Maybe there’d be a bit left over for them to be replaced.
I walked into the reception area. “Hello, I need to see the personal banker.” I read the name on the business card that Gran had clipped to the documents.
“Oh, I’m sorry. He retired late last year. Alain DuBois has taken his place. Would you like to see him instead?”
“Sure.” I took a seat in the waiting area, and shortly after that, a middle-aged man with an oily slick of black hair and a perfectly tailored suit came to meet me. Wow. Dressy for Coupeville.
“Miss Quinn?”
I nodded.
“Follow me.”
He led me into an office with glass walls. “How can I help you?”
I explained the situation and handed over the paperwork. “I’ll need to be added to the account.”
He took a minute, then five, to read the paperwork. Surely he was familiar with his own company’s documents, right? What was taking so long?
He finally pushed the papers back toward me. “You’ll see here, on this line, that assignation of the loan to a new party is not automatic when the property transfers to a new owner, even an inheritrix. You’ll need to qualify.”
“Qualify?”
“Yes. It’s possible for the loan to continue—to follow the property, as it were—but that’s the bank’s call. Just fill this out—” he rummaged in his drawer for a clipboard and then fixed a document to it—“with your employment information, your Social Security number, debts, etc. We’ll run your credit and check on your employment.”
My credit? The student loans. And I’d had to use a few credit cards to live in superexpensive California. My job was at Tony’s and my tips hadn’t even built up yet.
I filled the paperwork out and handed it to him and he left the room. I waited and waited and waited. A bead of sweat trickled from my forehead and made its way to the corner of my eye, where it stung. I wiped it away just as Mr. DuBois returned.
He saw me wipe the corner of my eye. “Yes, yes, you must have known it would be bad news,” he said, assuming, I thought, I’d wiped away a tear.
“I’m afraid, as you know, your credit is less than stellar, Miss Quinn. Your employment is new and not at the level to support an additional debt burden. Frankly, it won’t even support your current debt burden. Like so many of your generation—” he waved his hand condescendingly—“more debt than you can handle. I’m sure you have the latest phone release, though.”
I refused to acknowledge his gibe. I stood. “Thank you for your time.”
“Miss Quinn? You may want to have a seat again.”
I remained standing.
“I’m not simply saying that you can’t sign for more debt. I’m calling this loan in. The contract allows me to do so, after property transfer, within sixty days, at my discretion.”
“But . . . the land is worth much more than the amount due. There’s a lot of equity.”
“It is true that the land is valuable. However, we are not in the real estate sales business, Miss Quinn. We are bankers, interested in safe, reliable investments.”
“I haven’t missed a payment, and you can see that there’s money in the attached checking account to cover another eighteen months. Seems reliable to me.”
“Nevertheless. It’s in the binding contract. I’m going to be gracious and give you sixty days from today to bring in the money, instead of sixty days from the death of the original debtor.”
The hackles on the back of my neck rose. “How am I going to get the money in sixty days?”
“A sale, Miss Quinn. I looked up the property while awaiting your reports and found that it has rare, beautiful water and mountain views.”
Had that played into his decision? Seemed possible. But why?
He reached back into his desk and withdrew a business card, which he handed to me. “Here. Trustworthy developers. We work with them as often as possible.”
“Developers?”
“Networking, Miss Quinn. It’s the way business is done in the real world. A good deal helps everyone involved. If you sell it to them outright, you won’t pay the legal fees and other charges that come with foreclosure. If we need to foreclose, these same developers will certainly be on hand as the highest bidder. Land like yours is hard to come by.”
I folded the card into my purse and left after nodding a curt goodbye. After I was halfway out of the lobby, I turned back. He was already on the phone. Perhaps he was calling the developers at this moment so they could sharpen their parcel-dividing knives and continue to do business with them as he handed a plum property to them—literally.
I headed to the Coupeville dock, parked, and walked to the ice cream store. I took my chocolate cone to a bench on the pier. There must be someplace else to get the loan. After securing the ag tax, after following my dream for flowers and a community of people supporting one another, after promising Gran I would keep the land, I couldn’t give up. I finished the cone and opened the app for my bank on my phone, clicking through to apply for a loan. I entered the information. Within a minute, I received an email notification reporting that my application had been declined. I would receive a letter in the mail within thirty days explaining the factors behind their decision.
I didn’t need to wait for the letter. I knew the factors that had gone into it. The truth was, I wasn’t a crazy debtor. I didn’t take vacations. I drove an old car. I worked hard. No, my generation hadn’t faced widespread war; instead, we were crushed with debt, and if we wanted opportunities, we had, for the most part, to make them.
I guess I could have taught school. But it wouldn’t have been fair to the kids to have a teacher who didn’t want to be there.
Should I have said yes to Pamela? I couldn’t have known. Was I going to lose everything after all for standing up for myself? Insisting on being treated with dignity?
Lord, I need your help. I’ve done all I know how to do. I blinked back tears as I drove home. Once there, I walked to the swings under the apple trees, already yielding their fruit. I looked out at the fallow field where Gran’s beloved evergreens had grown. I’d cut off the limb, but it hadn’t saved the body after all.
I texted Nick. Does your mom know a good Realtor?
?
Yeah. Time to sell.
I’ll be right there.
He arrived in about twenty minutes, and as he pulled in, I texted Grace, inside studying, and asked her to come and meet us in the orchard. She sat in a wooden Adirondack chair across from us.
I handed the paperwork to her. “There’s a clause in here that says when the house transfers title, they have the right to call in the loan. He’s calling it in.”
Grace flipped through the pages rapidly; then she slowed down and carefully read one paragraph, underlining it with her finger as she went. She snapped the page back and looked up at me. “That’s right. They can. But the bills are being paid, right?”
“Yeah. Because I have so much debt and no job security, I’m a default risk. He handed me the card of a developer he knew would be interested. I have sixty days to pay the loan in full, or they will foreclose. Taking the amount owed . . .”
“And interest and penalties and attorney’s fees,” Grace said. “With you having no say over to whom it’s sold because it will go to auction, and he’s already told you that his ‘friends’ will be the high bidder. How thankful they’ll be to him for providing this property, and I’m sure they’ll find some way to reward him. Is there another way?”
I laughed, but it was laced with pain. “Either of you have seventy-five thousand dollars lying around? And even if we did, I still need a roof and operating expenses.”
“How about your dad?” Nick asked. “Can he help?”
I shook my head. “They are definitely in no financial place to do that—I know that for sure. Even if he wanted to.” Which I doubted.
Nick looked beyond the front of my property to the water and mountains. “You could sell this for a lot.”
“Yeah. I’ll be house poor and cash rich, I suppose,” I said. “I have control over only one more thing. To whom it is sold. I do not want this to be sold to a developer. I just want another kid to sit on this swing, watching the deer eat the apples that fall to the ground, reaching up and picking one for themselves. I don’t want the Mickey tree bulldozed. I don’t want the roses of Sharon ripped up or the peonies shopped out like orphans. They hardly ever grow when they’re transplanted. More likely, if I move them in the summer, they’ll die.”
A heart death.
Nick understood what I was saying and squeezed my hand.
“I want a family to live here. Private party sale, not corporate.”
“You need to make sure that is in the listing contract,” Grace said. “I’ll look it over . . . as a friend, not as a lawyer, since I can’t yet.” She met my gaze. “I’m sorry I didn’t see that clause in the loan docs earlier.”
“It’s a dozen pages of tiny print.” I reached out with my open hand and took hers. “I can hang on to the house until you hear back on the exam, long enough for Annika to finish earning her money and for us to sell bridal bouquets this summer.”
“Then what?” Grace asked.
“Then I’ll do what your halmoni did. I hold my head up and do what I love, with people I love, but on new land.”
Grace squeezed my hand and went back inside to study. She had only days before the exam.
“What do you need from me?” Nick asked. “Anything.”
“Help me enjoy the rest of my time here. This land, this house—this was always my happy summer place. When Labor Day came, I knew I’d have to head back to school and Dad and Mary Alice. I want to savor one more summer. And help me find a good Realtor.”
“You got it. My mom says you can trust this Realtor.” He pulled out his phone and shared a contact with me. “I know this is hard. But this beautiful woman I’m seeing, Cassidy Quinn?” He smiled and I smiled back. “She’s really wise. She told me that there is a reason the heart and the brain work well together. They were designed to do so.” He touched my bicep. “You are strong.” He gently tapped my heart. “You are courageous.” He touched my temple. “You are smart.” Then he touched my hands, one after the other. “You can take what you know and what you love and build this again. Build it better.”
I smiled. “Build it better.”
He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry I’ve got to run. I have a corporate Zoom meeting this afternoon.”
“Oh, that’s right. How’s work going?”
“It’s all good.” He pulled me into a bear hug. “Don’t worry so much about making sure you’re asking about me right now. Sometimes me takes precedence over we for a little while. You have a lot to balance. We’ll talk about me once you get the sale underway. Okay? One thing at a time.”
I nodded. “Thank you. One thing at a time.”
He tilted my face upward and gently kissed me. “One thing at a time.”
After he left, I reached up and grabbed a small apple, bit into it, and then sang the song Gran had loved best. “‘The Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord is good to me.’”
Like anyone, I’d had many losses but so many blessings, too. What other kid got to spend every summer on a property like this? Maybe, if I couldn’t keep it, it would be about another kid who could eat apples from the Mickey tree, like me. I was not going to rehearse a litany of my losses. Instead, I’d recall the bounty of my blessings.
I called the Realtor. “I want a family to buy my property,” I told her. “I’m willing to be accommodating on the price for the right family—but keep that between us. I’m sorry, but because time is so short, I’ve got to limit this to a thirty-day listing.” She needed to be able to sell it quickly, or I needed to give it to someone who could.
“Of course,” she said. “On all counts.” We’d spend a few days preparing the property and then she’d list it. “Bring some things to a storage unit,” she said. “Neat and sparse before listing. That way, the buyers can imagine their own things in the house, not yours.”
In principle, I agreed. Practically, that was going to be tough.
I headed up to the attic. That was the most jumbled space in the house. Almost everything up there should be brought to storage eventually.
I pushed the uniform box to the center of the room. I’d move those. I’d leave the hope chest because it was vintage and looked attic-y. Plus, I wanted all the hopeful things nearby to give me courage and cheer. Kneeling down, I opened the lid to the tea set again. Grace and I should have a little tea in the garden. Or maybe Annika and me. Better, the three of us!
I raised one of the delicate bone cups to the light and could see right through it. Beautiful roses vined up the sides. Why hadn’t Gran used these with me and Mom, instead of her heavy coffee mugs?
An envelope tucked to the side of the cups caught my eye. It had been awkwardly resealed. On the outside, in Gran’s handwriting, was scrawled Moving On.
Should I read it? I opened it, feeling slightly guilty. It was from her mother. The delicate stationery looked like it had been splashed with water . . . or tears.
Thank you for your hospitable invitation. Unfortunately, we are in the midst of a very busy social calendar, and I cannot foresee a time that I might make a visit. I do wish you the very best. You have chosen a life as a workingwoman, one without children.
I’m glad you reminded me of my mother’s tea set. I had forgotten about that. I miss it. As you and I will not be able to share an afternoon’s tea, I would like to request that you send it back. I’m sure you understand how valuable such an heirloom is to me.
Sincerely, Mother
Oh, Gran. I’m sorry. And apparently, despite the bold scrawl, Gran hadn’t moved on. She didn’t return this tea set. But she hadn’t used it, either. Pain contained. Had Gran meant for me to find it? She hadn’t said so all these years. Knowing her, she’d been ashamed that her own mother wanted nothing to do with her. But she hadn’t given it away, either, and she’d clearly not sent it back as had been demanded.
