Chapter 5 - The Ledger of Grace
Nora climbed the porch steps, the wooden boards creaking under her work shoes. She pulled the carbon slip from her pocket and held it out between two fingers.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Miss Clara,” Nora said quietly.
Clara Vance did not take the paper. She simply set her teacup down on a saucer with a muted clink. “I am seventy-two years old, child. At my age, you realize money is either used as a fence to keep people away, or as an axe to chop firewood for someone who is freezing. My sister Evelyn prefers fences. I prefer the wood.”
“It’s too much,” Nora said, her voice dropping. “I can’t repay this. Not in three years, not in ten. Between David’s debts and—”
“Did David ever ask me for repayment when he repaired the heating boiler in my basement during the blizzard of nineteen ninety-eight?” Clara interrupted, her voice firm, carrying the cadence of an educator used to cutting through excuses. “He worked in two feet of slush for six hours because he knew an old woman with bad lungs wouldn’t survive the night without heat. When I tried to write him a check, he took one of my ginger biscuits, smiled, and said we were square.”
Nora looked down at the faded floorboards. Tears, warm and stubborn, gathered along the edges of her eyelashes. “He was just being David.”
“And I am just being a neighbor,” Clara countered. “Evelyn believes that every square foot of earth belongs to those who have the deeds. But land doesn’t belong to anyone. We just borrow it for eighty years and leave our rubbish behind. She was going to throw you and that boy onto the street to impress the bank examiners. They’re auditing her accounts, you know.”
May you like
Nora looked up, surprised. “An audit?”
“The family trust is insolvent,” Clara revealed with a cold, matter-of-fact sigh. “Evelyn has been using tenant deposits to float mortgages on vacant commercial units by the rail depot. She’s sinking, Nora. And when people sink, they flail. They pull down whoever is standing closest to the edge.”
