“We’re drowning in debt, Serena.”
My mother’s voice came through my phone at two in the morning, thick with tears and fear and the kind of panic people like her only allowed themselves in private.
“The bank is taking the house.”
I sat up so fast the sheet twisted around my legs. My apartment was dark except for the weak glow of the digital clock on my nightstand. Two o’clock. Tuesday. Outside my bedroom window, downtown Atlanta was a scatter of lights and distant sirens, the soft hum of traffic moving somewhere far below. Inside, it was just me, my heartbeat, and the sound of my mother crying like the world had finally found a way to hurt her.
“Serena, please,” she sobbed. “They sent a final notice. If we don’t get fifty thousand dollars to the bank by the end of the week, they’re going to foreclose. They’re going to put the house up for auction. Your father doesn’t know what to do. We’re out of time.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached for the lamp.
In the warm yellow light, my apartment looked exactly like it always did. Quiet. Clean. Deliberate. Nothing flashy. A cream-colored sofa I’d bought secondhand and reupholstered myself. Books lined in clean rows. Two framed prints. A wool throw folded over the armchair by the window. My mother had been in that apartment once, years ago. She looked around with pinched lips and called it “a cute little starter place,” as if thirty-two-year-old me had somehow forgotten to keep climbing.