Free A Month at the Shore by Antoinette Stockenberg Page B

watch again."
    "Oh, yeah. Like a watch has karma," said Snack irritably. "It's a piece of junk. We're not exactly shy on junk. Toss it."
    Reluctantly, Laura said, "I guess you're right. Oh, well."
    The little group dispersed to their rooms, and Laura dropped the watch into one of the wastebaskets, then had second thoughts about the thing. It seemed symbolic of their own struggle against all odds. She retrieved it and dumped it in a small notions drawer before going out, at last, to have her turn at the shower.
    ****
    Corinne was right. After a day of working outside, a person's brain felt as alert as a bowl of pudding.
    The shower had helped restore Laura a little, but it was still all she could do to hold a pen in her hand and a yellow pad on her lap while hovering in a near coma over a desk strewn with paperwork that made no sense.
    "Dad never talked about the loan?" she asked her equally tired sister.
    "No. He never talked about money, period," Corinne said, stifling a yawn. "The different versions of the will, that was as financial as he ever got with me."
    "I do not understand this. I don't see how missing two payments can justify this nasty notice. We have to find the original document; that will explain everything. It must be around here somewhere."
    She closed the drawers that held the financial records and slid open the drawer on the other side of the desk, poking through the files there.
    They were exasperatingly random and unrelated: sales brochures on rose trellises and insecticides; L.L. Bean catalogues mixed in with colored blank sheets; mailing labels thrown in with flyers from a local furniture store. At the back, though, was a file she easily could have missed. It was labeled in faint pencil, "Great River Finance Co."
    Laura plucked it from its innocent neighbors the way she would a thistle from a bed of zinnias.
    She flipped through the file quickly, and then, with a sinking heart, scanned the document that lay at the bottom.
    "Oh, my God," she whispered.
    "What? What is it?" Corinne asked, trying to read over her shoulder. "You're scaring me, Laur."
    Which was the last thing that Laura wanted to do. She tried to seem calm. "Well, if I'm reading this right, Dad took out the equity loan with Great River Finance almost five years ago."
    And then, slipping into fury despite herself, she said, "It seems the good folks at Great River now feel they're entitled to call in the loan. The letter you got has the math right.  According to this, full payment really would be due next Wednesday."
    "That's eight days away!"
    "Yes, it is. I guess we'd better move up the date of our big sale," she added in a dismal attempt to seem light.
    "How much? Laura, how much do we have to come up with?"
    "Well ... a decent amount, I'm afraid," she said, her voice breaking a little. "Seventy-five thousand dollars, give or take."
    Tan as she was, Corinne went pale at the number. She sank into the oak chair next to Laura's worn-out swivel one and whispered, "You can't be serious. Not that much. Not that soon. That can't be true. It can't."
    "Maybe I'm wrong. Give me their letter again."
    Corinne handed it over with a trembling hand, and Laura compared loan numbers and reread all the fine print. She shook her head. "Nope. This is the loan, all right, and that's the deal."
    "Oh, my God. We have less than a thousand in cash. That's it."
    "I can't believe Dad would have done something this stupid," Laura said, seething. "Why wouldn't he just have gone to Chepaquit Savings?"
    Her head shot up. "Hold it. Where's the bank file?"
    Corinne pulled a worn folder marked "Chepaquit S." and handed it over. Leafing through the mountain of monthly statements, Laura found what she knew would be there: an application for a line of credit, which was denied, and one for an equity loan—also denied.
    "That son of a bitch!"
    "Who? Dad?"
    "No, not Dad," Laura said irritably. "Tell me again, Rin," she said in a soft and dangerous voice. "What, exactly, did