Patty said she watched his face go pale one shade at a time, like someone slowly turning down a dimmer switch.
Ezoic
The first person to grasp the real danger wasn’t Richard, though.
It was Eleanor.
She snatched Howard’s report right out of her son’s hands and started flipping through it, frantic, until she found the page with her own address on it. Her house. The house her husband had built in 1974.
The notice of default.
“You said she would never actually enforce this,” Eleanor whispered. She was staring at the page like it might rearrange itself into something less frightening. “Richard. You told me she’d never enforce it.”
Ezoic
Richard looked around the pavilion.
Almost everyone who’d been laughing a few minutes earlier was now suddenly very interested in their drinks, their plates, or the surface of the lake.
“She won’t,” Richard said. But his voice had lost most of its usual warmth. “Claire gets emotional. She always comes back.”
