new school,” he said with a small nod and the kind of smile that made her determine right there and then that she’d get him into the school even if she had to rob a bank to do it. “And Kyle Cherkins won’t be there, right?”
“No, he won’t.” She stood up again and took his little warm hand, leading him into the office. “Okay. Here we are. You know the drill. Sit quietly and color. No talking, no running, no interrupting me when I’m on the phone and no asking why Miss Pratt’s ankles are so wrinkly. Got it?”
“I know, I know.”
“Mommy! Mommy, Mommy.” Tap, tap, tap on her arm. “Look, Mommy.”
Kit held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and shot Johnny a shut up look. She returned to her call. “So you’re saying you lost all of the documentation?”
The bank official on the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Your former loan officer left in something of a hurry. We don’t know exactly where she put all the files she was working on. It’s caused quite a backup, I must say.”
Kit’s heart lodged in her throat. “I’m not going to lose my interest rate, am I?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
Kit’s stomach dropped. “Wait. Sincerely hope not isn’t good enough. I need to know.” Or what? Or she’d go to another company? Although her credit was good, there were a few tiny glitches—a forgotten department store credit card that she’d once been thirty-one days late in paying, a collection effort on the part of Big Jugs magazine for a subscription she’d never ordered—that she’d had to clear with Best State Mortgage. She did not want to start the process over again.
“We’ll do our best, Ms. Macy. If you could just get your bank statements, tax forms, W-2’s and employer’s statement to us, we’ll get right on it.”
“Employer’s statement?” Unbelievable. They needed something new every single time she talked to them.
“Just something stating your year-to-date earnings and projected income.”
“Okay.” She glanced at Johnny. Maybe it was a good thing she’d already gotten him, because now she was going to have to stay after and hope the editor, Ebbit, had time to write something up. “Anything else?”
“It’s all on the checklist.”
There was a beep on the line. The phone said it was in-house. Ebbit himself. “Okay, Mr. Black, I have copies of everything else, so I’ll just overnight them to you again.”
“No need to hurry.”
“No need to hurry?” Her voice leaped toward hysteria. “I’m supposed to close on the house in twenty-eight days.”
There was a nerve-racking pause.
Then the sound of papers shuffling on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, did you say twenty-eight days? I have you down for September.”
Johnny tapped Kit’s arm and she pulled it away, turning her office chair around. “No, it’s this month. July 30.” It was all she could do to stay calm. If this stupid company prevented her from getting her house because one person screwed up, she’d—
“I’ll make a note of it,” the loan officer said noncommittally.
Kit’s phone beeped again.
She thought her head might explode.
“All right. I have to take this call, Mr. Black, so I’ll just collect the information and you’ll have it in the morning.” She clicked over to the other line.
“We have an urgent meeting this afternoon at five,” Ebbit Markham told her.
“Okay.” She glanced at Johnny. There was going to have to be some serious bribery involved in trying to keep him sitting quietly in her office during an editorial meeting. “Actually I’m glad you’re staying a little late because I need you to give me a written statement that I work here.”
Silence.
“Ebbit?”
“Why do you need that?”
She tapped her pen on the desk. “It’s not a big deal. The mortgage company just wants proof that I’m employed.” She gave a casual laugh. “You know how it is—they don’t want to lend you money until you can completely prove you don’t need it.”
Again nothing.
“Oh! Yes, yes, well…” What was with him? He sounded as if she’d shocked him out of sleep or something. “I’ll just, uh, I’ll see you at five.”
“Okay.” She hung up the phone thoughtfully.
“Mommy.” Johnny tapped her again. “Are you off the phone now? Look at my picture.” He produced her May bank statement, replete with indelible ink scribbles. “It’s our new house. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, honey, that’s nice,” she said, distracted.
Johnny tugged on her sleeve. “You didn’t look at it. You have to look at it!”
She looked.
Oh, no. Oh. No. No, no, no. The bank statement. All those numbers.
In her mind’s eye she saw herself spending the evening with a bottle of Wite-Out, removing every line he’d added. And even then she ran the risk of it looking as if she’d somehow doctored her books.
But Johnny looked so proud, so pleased with his work, that she couldn’t bear to let out the anger that bubbled in her chest. “It’s good,” she said in a tight voice. “But, honey, next time ask me for paper, okay? Don’t write on something that already has writing on it. That’s really important, got it?”
“You don’t like it?”
She took a long breath. “Yes, I do, it’s just…” She sighed. “It’s just great.” She produced a pile of paper from her printer tray, looked at it and added a few more sheets. “Here. Do some more. I’ve got to go in the room next door for a meeting in a little while, and you’re going to stay here, so why don’t you draw all your very best friends for me. If you run out of paper, get more from there, okay?” She pointed to the printer tray.
He barely glanced at it, said, “’Kay,” and set about drawing immediately.
She looked at her clock again.
It was four-forty.
Kit always thought that if Samantha Stevens had twitched her nose and turned an old basset hound into a man, she’d have ended up with Ebbit Markham. Today he looked even more basset houndish than usual, his face drawn and white.
The staff of Home Life was collected in the conference room. Ebbit’s lifelong secretary, Miss Pratt—no one was sure of her first name—was handing out coffee in foam cups, her shaking hands sloshing the hot liquid onto laps, shirts and the floor.
“What’s going
