He swallows. ‘We’ve been living beyond our means for years, dipping into the capital, and the investments haven’t been doing well. I thought I’d make it up on that investment– I borrowed money for it– but instead I lost even more.’
She begins to feel sick.
It all spills out. He tells her about personal loans and bad investments, about money borrowed from a loan shark at usurious interest to make an ill-fated investment that he thought would solve all his problems, and that he now can’t pay back.
She listens to it all in disbelief and growing horror. He seems relieved to have finally told her, his burden lifted a little. A burden shared is a burden halved. His relief makes her angry. He gets to dump all this on her, and it makes him feel better, but now she gets to feel the weight of it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier, when I might have been able to help?’ she says angrily.
‘How could you help?’ he says sharply in return.
‘Maybe I could have advised you against the stupid investments.’
‘You don’t know anything about investments,’ he says dismissively.
‘And apparently neither do you.’ She watches the anger flare in his eyes and is somehow reassured. She can’t stand a weak man, a man who gives up.
‘I wasn’t the only one who invested; there are others at the firm who lost a great deal.’ He adds bitterly, ‘I got bad advice.’
She thrusts herself off the foot of the bed and paces the room, her arms folded. She turns on him. ‘You haven’t lost your job, have you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Would you tell me if you had?’
Now he’s curt with her. ‘Yes.’
‘But we still own this house.’
‘For now.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I have to pay the loan back. The only asset we have is this house. We’ll have to sell, or put another mortgage on it, a big one, to get the money to pay it back.’
‘No. Absolutely not.’
His voice tense, he says, ‘There’s no other way to get the money.’
She screams at him. ‘When the fuck were you planning on telling me?’
He takes a deep breath, as if he’s trying not to yell back at her. ‘Jill, we have been living on my inheritance, my investments. Most of that is gone. A lot of it paid for this house and its improvements. My salary is good, but it’s not that good. If we want to stay here, another mortgage is the only option. And even then…’
‘There has to be another option,’ she says stubbornly.
He seems to hesitate, and she waits. He finally says, ‘I suppose I could ask Greg for some money. A loan.’
She considers. If Greg loaned them some money, they could take their sweet time about paying it back. Maybe never pay it back at all. ‘Do you think he would?’
‘Maybe. I won’t know unless I ask.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘But I hate to ask him.’
‘He’s rolling in money,’ she says. ‘How hard would it be for him to give you a loan?’
Ted shrugs. ‘He can be a hard-ass, especially with me. You know that.’
‘We’re not putting another mortgage on this house. Ask him.’
Chapter Five