Page 62 of The Sea-Mist Cottage Inn
“I know,” I told Roman. “But I don’t know how I can stop him. I’m trying to find a solution, but I’mfailing. God! I’ve done nothing but fail since Micah died!”
My chest and head were so full of emotion I thought my eyeballs might pop from their sockets, but I fought to keep my voice low and as calm as possible so Wyatt didn’t hear. All of this affected him, too, and I didn’t want to lie and pretend everything was great and there was nothing in our way toward happiness; however, he was finally starting to act like a kid again, finally setting aside the mantle of ‘man of the house,’ and I wanted him to keep hold of that light as long as he could.
“Let mehelp, Leo,” Roman said, drawing me into his arms. “You don’t have to fight this on your own.”
“It’s too much money! I barely clawed enough out of my old life to be able to fix up what Ithoughtthe Sea-Mist would need and keep Wyatt and me fed and warm while we did it. Now the property needs all I thought and a whole lot more, and there’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar tax lien on the place! I will not borrow that money from you. I don’t want to fail at being with you.”
He smiled. “I didn’t say let me lend you the money. In fact, I think I said, just a minute ago, that I agree it would be too much pressure. But I can cosign for you. Will you let me do that?”
“How is that different? It’s still you on the hook if I can’t pay.”
“It’s different because the money stays with me, doing me good,unlessyou can’t pay. That’s how it’s different.” He took a step back and held my hands. “This is not just me trying to save you. I’ve heard you on that point, and I understand. Now I need you to hear me and understand: I’m telling you this is for me, too. Because I want to be of help to you, yes, but also because I want to do what I can to keep Manfred out of town.”
It wasn’t the first time the idea of a cosigner had entered my head; each of the loan applications I’d filled out had fields for cosigners to complete. But I’d discounted the idea for the same reason I’d refused the idea of Roman taking a big chunk of his investment portfolio out—with penalty—to lend me the money outright: I hadn’t seen a material difference between lending me the money outright or being responsible for covering the debt if I failed to repay. It all came down to Roman risking his financial health on mine, and mine was in hospice.
Now, though, the idea sparked. I don’t know if it was because my last-chance loan application had been denied, or if Roman’s case really made sense. I hope it was both—that my heightened desperation made me see the real sense in Roman’s case.
Whatever it was, I nodded. “Okay.”
He grinned brightly, like I’d handed him a gift. “Okay? Yeah?”
“Yeah. We can talk to somebody about that, at least. If it doesn’t make too much trouble for you, then yes. I will take that help and thank you for it.”
As scared as I still was, I cannot exaggerate the immensity of the relief as hope lifted the panic from my chest. Accepting Roman’s offer to cosign opened the first viable path toward saving the Sea-Mist. But I had to make sure it didn’t come between us.
He pulled me close again. “And I thank you for trusting me.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust,” I told him.
His eyes darkened with sadness. “I wish you could see you the way I do.”
Too overwhelmed with emotion—all of them, it seemed, clamoring at once—to hold his gaze, I let my head fall forward and rest on his chest. He held me close and kissed my head.
“It’s going to work out,” he whispered. “You’re going to be happy here, Leo. The way you’ve always deserved to be.”
Oh, how I hoped he was right.
TWENTY-FOUR: Lifeline
At the end of that week, Roman and I sat in the loan manager’s office at the Bluster Community Credit Union.
I’d opened accounts at BCCU within a few days of arriving in town, and I’d thus made my first loan application here—and gotten my first rejection.
But I’d applied online, and Roman thought doing it the old-fashioned way, face to face with a loan officer, had a better chance for success. He thought you should force people to look at you when they gave you bad news.
It was a decent philosophy, but if this attempt turned out to be successful, I figured it would be Roman cosigning that tipped the scale, not the loan manager’s guilt.
The loan manager was a woman about my age, maybe a few years older. She had that ‘bank-employee’ look about her—you know, dressed in a sort of mall version of a power suit, this one in a merlot-hued poly blend. Under it was a silk or faux-silk pussy-bow blouse in an abstract pattern aggressively color-matched to the suit. Flesh-tone stockings and sensible black pumps with a two-inch block heel. Dyed blonde hair in a bun at the back of her head, perfectly applied makeup, and burgundy nail polish. Accessorized with sedate but noticeable gold earrings, watch and her wedding rings. Bank employee.
Her name was Cheryl Jenkins-Conway. She wasn’t a native, so I didn’t know her. But she’d married Walter Conway, who’d been three years ahead of me at Bendixen. The Conway family owned the Windswept Winery, a vineyard in the hills just east of Bluster.
Married to a Conway, loan manager at the credit union, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t a native. Cheryl Jenkins-Conway was an Important Person in Bluster now. After two decadesaway, I was the outsider in this office, and I felt it. Roman and Cheryl spent the first ten minutes or so of our meeting in friendly small talk, most of which I didn’t understand. I listened and smiled that vaguely pleasant smile we women plaster on our faces when we’re excluded from something but trying to look like we’re not.
Eventually they transitioned to the business portion of our agenda, and Cheryl took my information and tapped around on her desktop computer until my accounts came up. She had the monitor turned so we couldn’t see the screen.
“Okay,” she said, “I see that you applied a few days back and were declined.”
“That’s right,” I said. “There wasn’t a reason given—it said I could contact the credit union for more information.” I hadn’t done so, because it didn’t really matter why they wouldn’t give me money.
