Chapter 4: The Name on the Page
I spread the lender’s papers across my kitchen table and weighed down the corners with the sugar bowl. The letter called me a personal guarantor, and a figure printed beneath that heading was large enough to make my breath catch.
The last page held a photocopy of a signature. From a few feet away, it looked like mine.
I carried the packet to the window, where the light was better. The ink had gone grainy in the copy, but the long stroke of the T and the cramped Martinez beneath it seemed familiar. I set the page down, then picked it up again, as if my name might change while I wasn’t looking.
My checkbook sat in the drawer beside the table. I pulled it out and opened it to a check I’d written the week before for the water bill. The signatures were similar, but mine had grown smaller over the years. The one on the guarantee slanted harder to the right.
That didn’t mean anything. A signature could change. A photocopy could blur it. I knew enough about old wood to understand that a crack near a joint wasn’t proof of who’d put weight on the chair.
I knew enough about money to understand that this paper could take my house.
I found the phone number for Miriam Shaw, the independent financial adviser who had helped me organize my retirement accounts. I had never needed her to make decisions for me. I needed her now to tell me which questions to ask before fear answered them.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Teresa? Is everything all right?”
“I got a letter from a lender. They say I guaranteed a loan for Alexander’s firm.”
There was a brief silence. Not the polite kind people use when they’re waiting to offer comfort. Miriam was reading the words I’d just said and measuring them.
“Do you have the document in front of you?”
“Yes. A copy of something called a personal guaranty.”
“Has the lender asked you to make a payment?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t offer one. Don’t sign anything they send, and don’t tell them you’ll make it right while you’re still trying to find out what happened.”
I pressed my thumb against the edge of the letter. “They’ve already written my name under the signature line.”
“A name on a page isn’t the same thing as a decision you made.”
Her calmness let me unclench my jaw, though it didn’t make the papers less threatening.
“Keep every page and the envelope,” she said. “Make a copy for yourself. Write down when it arrived and who has spoken to you. And don’t send the originals to anyone.”
“I can do that.”
“I know you can. But this is your retirement, Teresa. Not a loose screw you can tighten and forget about.”
“I’ve never forgotten what happens when you leave a loose screw.”
She gave a small, humorless laugh. “I’m sure you haven’t.”
After we hung up, I put the letter and envelope in a clean folder. I wrote the date it had arrived on a sheet of lined paper, then recorded the names of everyone who had spoken to me about the loan. Richard’s name made my pen pause. Alexander’s made my hand tighten.
I didn’t want a list of my son’s failures. I wanted a record of what I actually knew.
The loan date was printed near the top of the agreement. I copied it onto my notes, along with the lender’s name and the amount. My hand had stopped trembling. The figures had edges now. Edges could be examined.
I sat back and looked toward the open doorway of Alexander’s old room. The little oak chair waited on the workbench. One leg was still clamped in place, and a curl of pale wood rested beside it.
For a long time, I had treated every problem in that room as if it belonged to my son. His schoolbooks. His trophies. His forgotten drawings. I’d kept them as if an untouched room could keep a place open in his heart for me.
The chair, at least, belonged to no one but itself.
I returned to the table and called the number for the supplier where I’d backed Alexander’s first account. It had been years since I’d spoken to anyone there, but the woman who answered recognized my name before I’d finished giving it.
“Teresa Martinez,” she said. “Well, I’ll be. I haven’t heard from you in ages.”
“Nora Bell?”
“The one and only.”
Her voice brought back the old store in an instant: the bell above the door, the dusty smell of lumber, the rattle of the register drawer. Nora had managed accounts for the supplier back when I was still keeping Alexander’s first business afloat one careful purchase at a time.
“I’m sorry to call out of the blue,” I said. “I need to ask about an old account file.”
“Is this about Alexander’s supplier account?”
My stomach tightened. “It might be. A lender says I signed a personal guaranty for a recent loan to his firm. I’m trying to find out what papers they could have used to identify my signature.”
Nora didn’t answer immediately. I heard a keyboard click, then stop.
“Did you ever back his first account?” she asked.
“I did. I remember signing paperwork years ago.”
“I remember, too. You read every line before you put your name down.”
“I wish that were the only paper with my signature on it.”
“Do you have a date for the loan?”
I read it from the agreement.
Nora went quiet. The silence was so sudden I leaned closer to the phone, as though I might hear a drawer open on her end.
May you like
“What is it?” I asked.
“That date,” she said slowly. “Teresa, our old supplier file was accessed recently.”
