So I did the harder thing, the colder and more complete thing.

I let the fury pass through me without giving it a single visible inch, and I kept, sealed and quiet in my pocket, the one response that could not be spun, could not be dismissed, could not be reframed as hysteria: the paper.

You cannot call a foreclosure hysterical.

You can only sign it.

Chapter 7 — The Exact Second

Callum had seen all of it.

His mother had very nearly put me over the side of his family’s boat, and he had watched it happen, and what he did was push his sunglasses a little higher up his nose.

“Babe, honestly,” he said, tired and faintly embarrassed, as if I were a scene he was waiting out.