Chapter 3

The folder was heavier than it looked. Inside, the first page was a statement — a bank statement, printed on the bank’s letterhead, with the business account number across the top and a column of transactions below. I read the top line first, the way Elena had taught me to read it nine days ago, and I felt the floor tilt under my feet.

The account balance was not what it should have been. It wasn’t the small, careful balance I’d been protecting — the one I’d built up by covering twenty-one months of late payments, scraping together every spare dollar from extra classes and weekend sessions, telling myself that if I could just keep the account alive for a little longer, I could close it clean and walk away. The balance on the page was larger. Much larger. Large enough to hurt.

I read the second line. A deposit. Large. Made three days ago, from a new vehicle financing line.

I read the third line. Another deposit. Same date. Same source.

I read the fourth line — and that was the one that made me go still. It was a transfer, outgoing, to a dealership. A big one. A down payment, the kind of down payment you put on a three-row SUV with a third row and leather seats.

Marisol’s key fob stopped swinging.

I looked up from the statement at the bank woman — still standing at the edge of the lobby, her briefcase at her feet, her hands clasped in front of her. “What is this?” I asked.

“You’ve never seen the financing line,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She looked at me with something close to pity. “The loan — the original business loan, the one you co-signed — it has an interest-assignment clause. And a line of credit attached. When the loan stays open past the original term, the line activates. Any financing taken under that account draws against it.”

Pam made a sound — a small, sharp exhale, like air escaping a tire. Her bracelets were clicking against each other, fast, and she was looking at Dev, and Dev was looking at the wall screens, and Marisol had taken a step away from him, away from the counter, away from all of it.

My thumb moved down the page. The transfers were all there — the deposit from the financing line, the down payment to the dealership, the balance left over. And at the bottom of the page, in the notes column, someone at the bank had typed a single line: