Beyond Summer (39 page)

All of a sudden, the words I normally would of said, the words that would of spiraled us into a fight, seemed pointless and immature. Most of our fights were pointless and immature. Cody was working just as hard as I was. He was working to pay the bills on our house, the house I’d wanted to buy. Now that I had it and the problems that went with it, it was time for me to grow up, time for
us
to grow up and act like a team instead of poking holes in each other because we were too stressed to think. “Listen, I don’t want to fight, okay? I found out some things about the house tonight, and I need to tell you. We’ve got to figure out what to do.”

He let his eyes fall closed, swiped a hand across his forehead, stretching the angry line in the center. “It can’t wait?”

“No, it can’t wait. Really, Cody, it can’t.” I took a breath and started in on everything I’d learned about Householders. By the time I’d finished, Cody was wide-awake and looked like he was ready to put a fist through the wall. His anger choked the room like smoke as he paced from the door to the hallway and back again. “They can’t do that,” he growled, pointing a finger out the window, toward
they
, whoever they were. “They can’t tell people one thing to their face and put something else in the paperwork. It’s fraud.”

My stomach squeezed and clenched, and I slid my hand across it, rubbing hard. “Well, it looks like they’ve been getting away with it. We shoulda read the papers. We shouldn’t’ve signed until we had it looked at by a lawyer or something. We shouldn’t’ve trusted that salesman, no matter how nice he was. He
works
for Householders. Of course he’s going to make it sound like one big picnic.”
Never sign anything you haven’t read.
It was one of those grown-up rules I hadn’t really thought about until now.

Cody lifted his hands, then let them fall to his sides. His shoulders, normally square and strong, fell forward with his hands. His face melted. “Why can’t we ever just do something right for once? Why is it always one screwup after another?” Punching a fist in the air, he kicked a toy police car one of the boys’d left on the floor. It skittered across the room and hit the wall. In another thirty seconds, he’d be doing actual damage, storming around like a kid throwing a fit.

“Listen to me, all right? It isn’t going to help to tear things up.”

“If they take this house back, they’re gonna get it in pieces.” The muscles flexed in his arms, ready for a fight.

“They’re not getting this house back. This is our house. We have to think about what we’re going to do. I’ve been reading on the Internet. There’s an article about a lady in New Jersey who took a mortgage company to court for tacking junk fees and credit life insurance onto her loan without telling her, and she won.”

Cody’s lips parted and air hissed through. “How’re we going to take Householders to court? Where’re we gonna get the money for that? You know what kind of lawyers those companies can pay? They’ll just tie it up in court until we run out of money. They know they can do whatever they want. They’re not afraid of us.”

I stood up from the chair and felt light-headed, like I was dreaming all of this and it wasn’t really happening. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get some lawyer to take it on contingency, or maybe find other people they’ve cheated and start a class-action suit. Lawyers take those on percentages. I read an article about . . .”

Cody rocked slowly backward and landed against the wall, then stayed there like he needed support to keep on his feet. “Geez, Shasta, reading it on the Internet doesn’t make you a lawyer. We don’t know squat about this kind of thing. How in the world are we gonna do all that stuff—start a court case, get people to join some kind of class-action suit, talk to lawyers and stuff?”

“I can do this, Cody. Remember back in sophomore English when we had to do all those debates about Supreme Court decisions? Mrs. Lindoll always wanted me to go on and be a lawyer. She said I’d be good at it, and she should know, considering that almost everyone in her family is either a lawyer or a judge.” While I was searching the Internet all night, I was thinking of Mrs. Lindoll.
You know, Shasta
, she’d said,
with your kind of passion and people skills, you could go a long way—college, law school, you name it. If you’ll just apply yourself, there’s no limit to what you could accomplish. All these things you believe are wrong in the world, you could have a hand in changing them—put that fire to good use. . . .

Maybe when all of this was over, someday when there was more time, more money, I’d do it. Maybe I’d take some classes and start working toward Mrs. Lindoll’s vision of me.

Cody gave me a tired look. “What we need to do is figure out how to cover the payments. That’s how we’re gonna stop them from digging us in deeper with the late charges and the—what did you call them—broker price inspections.” In Cody’s world, things were always black-and-white.

“Cody, we . . .” I stopped myself just short of arguing some more. It wouldn’t do any good. Cody was falling asleep on his feet. “We can talk about it more tomorrow. If the copy of the contract doesn’t show up in the mail, I’ll call the Householders office and tell them I’m coming over there to get one. I’m sure I can get Tam to drive me after lunch, or the boys and I can catch the city bus. I figured out how the route works; I just haven’t tried it yet.”

“Yeah, all right.” Cody rubbed his eyes, yawning. “I’ll check with the hotel and see if there’s any way I can get my check for the parking garage job early. That would help. Householders can’t take this place if we meet the payments.”

I thought of the Farleys and my stomach clenched. They’d probably had this same discussion a year ago. “We have to fight this, Cody. What they’re doing is wrong. We shouldn’t have to pay those fees. We can’t just sit back and let them walk all over us. What about all the other people they’ve hurt?”

Letting out a long sigh, Cody rested his head against the wall, his eyes closing. “We’re just regular people, Shasta. Ordinary folks. We can pay the fees cheaper than we can pay a lawyer. You can bet Householders knows that.”

“Sometimes ordinary people end up in extraordinary situations
.
” Mrs. Lindoll had said that when she was talking about
The Diary of Anne Frank
.

“Geez. You sound like Lindoll.”

“She was right.”

Sliding his hands into his pockets, he opened his eyes and shifted off the wall. “Maybe,” he said quietly. “Let’s go on to bed, all right? I can’t talk any more tonight. I’m dead.”

I rubbed my stomach, feeling like I was about to be sick. “Go ahead. This whole business has me tied up in knots. I think I’ll sit up awhile and . . .” I stopped just short of saying,
search the Internet some more and look for lawyers who’ve taken on cases like ours.
That would only make Cody feel like I was ramrodding him. If he had a little time to think about it on his own, he’d know I was right. “. . . wait until I feel a little better.”

“Okay.” His answer came out in a sigh as he headed down the hall. Right now, he didn’t care if I showed up in bed or not. He wanted to get away from everything, including me. After he turned on the water in the bathroom, he came back up the hall long enough to break the news that there was a chance the department might send him out of town for a couple days.

“Out of town? When? Where?” I choked out.

“D.C., the day after tomorrow. But it probably won’t happen. They’re doing some kind of a pitch for federal money to bring in minority officers. They need faces. They just mentioned it was a possibility, that’s all.”

A supportive wife probably would have been proud of him, but all I could think was that if Cody left me here by myself right now, I’d never be able to handle it. On top of all the trouble with Householders, Dell was coming in three days. The house wasn’t anywhere close to being ready for company, and the yard was a mess, not to even mention that stupid oleander bush. “Tell them you have a family emergency, and they’ll have to send somebody else.”

He rolled his eyes, like I was crazy for asking. “Yeah, right. I tell them that, I won’t be the kind of guy the department wants. You’ve got to be able to keep your personal crap together, Shasta. You can’t let it interfere with the performance of your duty.”

“But, Cody . . .” I moaned, and he crossed the room and kissed me on the head, like that was supposed to somehow make it better.

“Like I said, don’t worry about it. I’m sure it won’t happen.” But he didn’t sound sure. He sounded like he was prepping me. He squeezed my shoulder just before he headed off to the shower. “Whatever you find out tomorrow, don’t get in touch with your mom or Nana Jo about this.”

“I won’t,” I promised, thinking that maybe he’d read my mind. A little voice was whispering that if Cody left me alone with this mess, I was going to break down and call Mama. The wimpy little girl in me wanted someone, anyone to bail us out of this hole.

By the next day, I was sorry I’d made that promise to Cody. Tam wasn’t feeling good, so the boys and I went to the Summer Kitchen by ourselves. When we walked back up the street, the mailman was just turning the corner. I held my breath as I opened the box, and I wasn’t even sure what I was hoping for.

The contract was in there, finally. I took it inside and put the boys down for a nap and spent the afternoon reading through legal mumbo jumbo and trying to understand it. The stuff that might be about fees was so confusing you really did need a lawyer to figure it out. I wanted to call home and see if Nana Jo could help me, since she’d seen a lot of house contracts over the years. I couldn’t call, of course. Cody and I were on our own with this one.

I settled for typing some of the contract clauses into a couple of legal advice sites on the Internet, and then reading more information about predatory lending. The news there wasn’t good. Articles were filled with warnings like,
Unexpected and unexplained charges can be added to a borrower’s account as soon as they are late in making a single payment. Homeowners then find themselves in an unfortunate legal gray area. If and when they are able to obtain legal documents from their mortgage companies, the documents can be almost impossible for the average homeowners to decipher.

That much was true. If Cody and I were average homeowners, then that paragraph sounded like our situation exactly. It also fit with the story the Farleys had told me about their Householders disaster.

After feeding the kids supper and getting them to bed for the night, I found another paragraph that fit even better and answered the question of why a company would want to sell homes they’d just have to repossess later on: . . .
property-flipping scams, which have become a common occurrence in a number of cities. Property flipping begins with the purchase of distressed properties at a low price, and then, after limited or no repairs, the property is resold at prices inflated beyond the actual value, frequently with the intent of later repossession. The victims of property flipping are often unsuspecting low-income, minority first-time home buyers. Residents of surrounding properties often become secondary victims of such a scam, as property valuations and tax bases for the area increase. . . .

By the time Cody came home, I was convinced there was more happening on Red Bird Lane than just bad loans with unexpected fees tacked on. There was something bigger going on, and without knowing it, Cody and me had landed right in the middle of it.

He was tired again when he walked in the door, and I hated to spring my bag of suspicions on him. I picked up the paper about property-flipping scams and handed it to him. “Read this,” I said. “I’m not sure yet . . . I mean, I don’t have any proof, but I think this might be what’s going on in this neighborhood.”

He just shook his head and set the paper on the coffee table with a sour look. For whatever reason, he was really in a mood tonight. “I can’t, Shas. I’ve got to pack. I’m leaving for D.C. tomorrow.”

I jerked awake from a fitful sleep and lay staring at the ceiling. Something felt wrong, but the living room was dark, the house silent except for the faint sound of Aunt Lute snoring at the end of the hall. Towers of boxes cast odd shadows in the muted, mustard-colored light pressing through the window covering. The glow caught my attention as I blinked away sleep. There were two points of light . . . a car . . . someone was outside in a car. Sitting up, I looked down the hall, my pulse fluttering. Maybe Barbie had decided to take the kids and run away, after all. Maybe these last few days since our big fight, she’d only been playing along. Maybe Fawn was outside, poised to help them make a quick getaway. . . .

The hallway was quiet, the doors still closed. Barbie’s purse and cell phone were on the coffee table, her shoes underneath it. I checked the time on the phone. Five thirty in the morning. The sun wasn’t even up yet.

The lights died outside. Car doors opened and closed. There were voices. Men’s voices.

Grabbing Barbie’s phone, I stood up, moved unsteadily across the room, slipped close to the narrow crack at the corner of the window covering, tried to see the driveway, but the gap revealed only a slice of yard. Across the street, Shasta’s outside lights were off, which meant Cody was home. I could call Shasta. . . .

Outside, the lock clicked on the security bars, the sound startlingly loud against the early-morning silence. I jumped, dropped the phone, felt it bounce off my foot, then heard it skitter away and hit a box. Who was there? Uncle Boone was out of town on a business trip again. Who else had a key to this house? I hit the switch for the porch light, dropped to my knees, and scrambled for the phone. Someone knocked softly on the door.

A rapid pulse thrummed in my ears as I stood up and tried to see through the peephole. The glass was cloudy. I couldn’t make out anyone on the other side. My hands pressing on the wood caused the door to rattle.