I drive in silence for a few minutes. The shock of seeing the police on my front lawn and then inside my house has worn off a bit, and now I am plain terrified.
As I merge onto the Beltway to head toward my mother’s facility, Mark finally calls me back. As soon as he answers, I blurt out what happened—starting with the police showing up and ending with a recap of my call with the lawyer. “Artie Zucker will be at our house by six.”
“I know.” His tone is curt.
“Fine. Just reminding you.”
We agree to be back at the house by four to get ready for Artie.
I hang up and focus on the drive, a bit unsettled by Mark’s abruptness. I have my phone and car back, as well as paperwork on the seat beside me detailing exactly what they took from the house—including our computer. How am I going to pay bills or check email? I do everything online. It’s then that I realize they did not take my laptop. It was sitting in my tote the whole time, and the police never asked about it. I feel a bit of relief, but also a slight sense of having gotten away with something. Surely, they would have confiscated my laptop if it had been in the house.
Thank god for small things. All my work stuff is on my laptop. I don’t know how I would have explained to Mike that I couldn’t edit my photos.
When I glance at myself in the mirror, I see a wild-eyed, red-faced woman. I can’t help but imagine the conversations that are taking place in the neighborhood about me. I try to relax and focus on staying under the absurdly low thirty-miles-an-hour speed limit on Connecticut Avenue. The last thing I need is a speeding ticket.
As I pass the Chevy Chase fire station, my phone pings with a text from Barb DeSoto in Westport: We have a major problem. Call me ASAP.
The words send another wave of shock through my all-too-sensitive system. Everything that can go wrong is. A car blares at me as I yank the wheel to the right and pull into the parking lot of a library.
“What kind of problem?” I ask Barb, who answers my call right away.
“I’ve stopped by the house, and there’s no good way to say this, but putting it on the market now would be a disaster.”
“Why?”
“Let me ask you, Allie,” Barb says in a patient tone. “When was the last time you visited the place?”
“About a year and a half ago. My sister is the one who keeps an eye on it.” Only one other car sits in the lot, a weathered gold Chrysler LeBaron, which triggers a memory of my father. In one of the few photos I have of him, he stands proudly in front of a similar sedan, the kind of wide, gas-guzzling dinosaur you never see on the roads anymore.
“Well, she hasn’t been,” Barb says, her voice sharp.
“I know, it needs a new roof and a new septic tank.”
“That’s not all it needs. The paint is peeling, the gutters are literally sagging, and that’s just the outside. Inside, you have a serious mouse problem, and the banister is loose to the point of being dangerous.” I can picture Barb ticking these problems off on her French-manicured fingers. I’ve never seen Barb’s fingers, of course. What I do know of her I have gleaned from her website, but her glistening, white smile and shellacked blond bob suggest to me that Barb sports a flawless French manicure. “And don’t get me started on that kitchen. I estimate there’s at least fifty, if not seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of work to do on that house before you put it on the market. Of course, you could sell it as is, but that’s a tough sell. At least there are no tenants—that always complicates a sale—but still, in the condition it’s in, you may not even break even.”
“Break even? What are you talking about? That house is worth at least a million.”
“But the mortgage is almost eight hundred thousand.”
“No, that’s not right. My mother inherited that house sixteen years ago. There’s no mortgage.”
“I’m looking at the paperwork right here,” Barb says. “Sharon Healy took out a jumbo reverse mortgage on the property. She’s pulled almost eight hundred thousand dollars out of the house.”
I shake my head in disbelief, even though I know she can’t see me. “My mother is incompetent. She’s been in an assisted living facility for years. I’m my mother’s power of attorney, and I did not approve any mortgage.”
“Well, if all that’s true, we very well may be looking at fraud.” Barb sighs. “I think you ought to contact the Westport police.”
Some kind of event must be taking place at Morningside House, because when I arrive, the main lot is full, and I have to pull around to the side lot. I shoot off a text to Daisy: What the hell is a reverse mortgage???
Tension grips my neck as I walk to the front of the building, and I can feel my shoulders inching closer to my ears. The last thing I want to do right now is call the Westport police. Everything is going wrong at once. I pull my coat tight against a gust of wind that is whipping particles of dirt into my eyes.
Inside the facility, it looks like the Halloween section of a crafts store exploded. Glittering paper pumpkins hang from a garland that stretches the length of the large lobby. Gangly scarecrows sit atop bales of straw that flank the faux fireplace. The room even smells like fall, a cloying combination of pumpkin spice and candy corn, but it cannot completely mask the acrid odor of ammonia.
“Are you here for the apple bobbing?” the woman at the front—Desiree, according to her name
