Janice Johnson - With Child

She opened a tablet of paper and decided to list what she owed first. She didn’t even know what Dean paid for.

Mindy found a bank statement first and discovered that the mortgage was an automatic deduction. An enormous one. She stared at the amount with dismay. A neighbor had sold recently, and if this house was worth about the same… There must not be very much equity, or Dean wouldn’t have been making such big payments.

After a moment she shrugged. It wasn’t as if she had a choice.

A few lines down she spotted two more deductions, both car payments. His and hers. She’d driven a beater when she’d met Dean, and he’d insisted on buying her a new car. He’d worry about her, he’d said when she’d protested. And Dean had loved the Camaro he drove, but he still owed an awful lot on it. Thinking about the car, fire-truck red, sitting in the garage made her falter and blink back more tears.

Swallowing, she made herself go on, reaching for the next envelope and neatly slitting it open with the letter opener she’d found on Dean’s desk.

This one was a MasterCard. He owed $4,569. Mindy had never even had that big a credit limit before. She wrote the amount of the debt, the creditor and the payment on the second line, after the mortgage.

The gas bill was way higher than she’d expected, too, as was the water and sewer and the Nordstrom bill and bills for two different Visa cards. He owed a whole lot of money on the boat that occupied a third of the garage. He’d loved that boat, too, a white cabin cruiser he’d renamed The Mindy after he’d met her. He loved to take friends out on the Sound. Mindy, who didn’t swim very well, hadn’t actually enjoyed going out. She’d pretended she got queasy, but the truth was that panic had flooded her from the moment water opened between the dock and the hull.

The boat, at least, was easy—she’d sell it as soon as she could.

There was enough in the checking account to pay all the bills, but not much would be left over. Especially since some of these payments were already late, and the next month’s bills would be arriving soon. Dismayed, she recalculated a couple of times. She guessed she would have to call the attorney. Dean had had investments, hadn’t he? Maybe they could sell some stock, or cash in a CD, or something.

She debated whether to write a little note on each bill saying something to the effect that Dean Fenton had died unexpectedly, that the will was in probate and she, his wife—no, widow—would be the one now paying. But wasn’t that something the executor should do? Dean’s executor, of course, was Quinn, who in that capacity had every right to nag her and maybe even override her decisions. She didn’t know.

She opened the checkbook, but didn’t write anything for a long time. Dean L. and Mindy A. Fenton, the checks all said. Only, now it would just be Mindy A. She was responsible for all those debts. Debts she hadn’t even known they owed.

With shame she realized she should have known. Would have, if she’d ever asked or expressed any interest. But she hadn’t. Dean had acted as though he loved to take care of her and give her anything she wanted, and with this house and the boat and the Camaro and his own business, he’d looked as if he could afford to. She knew he’d been a cop until not that long ago, but it just hadn’t occurred to her that he’d borrowed heavily on future success that wasn’t going to happen.

With a sinking feeling, she admitted if only to herself that some of Quinn’s contempt was justified. She’d been some kind of…trophy wife, something fun and pretty like the Camaro or the boat. Not really the partner she’d imagined, or she would have known.

The panic she felt as she wrote checks, one after another, wasn’t much different than the panic that bounced in her when the expanse of water opened between the boat that began to feel oh so tiny and the shore, shrinking to a faint smudge like a mirage.

Dean was dead, and she was pregnant, and unless—please God!—he had lots of investments, she wasn’t going to have enough money to keep up with these bills.

She had to start selling things, and soon. Quinn, she thought with a small coal of anger, suspected how things stood, or he wouldn’t have been nagging the way he had. How dared he not say anything and make it sound like it was she who’d been lax!

And Dean… How dared he keep buying and buying, throwing parties and playing golf and insisting she had to have the little BMW in the driveway, and never tell her he didn’t really have the money!

After she’d put stamps on the bills, she would mount a search for the safe-deposit key the attorney kept asking about.

She had to know where she and the small flutter of life inside her stood.

ONCE HE’D GOTTEN HER to thinking about money, by God that’s all she seemed able to think about. When could he find a buyer for the security business? How did she go about selling the boat? Now the Camaro. The cherry-red Camaro Dean had coveted all his life and loved with a passion.

“What?” Quinn stared across the paper-strewn kitchen table at Dean’s widow. “You’re already planning to sell his car?” When he wasn’t even cold in his grave?

She heard the unspoken part. Her face took on that closed, stubborn look he was coming to detest even more than the frail, woe-is-me expression she’d worn for the first few weeks.

“I don’t want to drive it, and I can’t afford the payments.”

“How much are they?”

She pushed the bill across the table.

Quinn picked it up and frowned. She was right. Dean owed a whopping amount, and she really couldn’t keep up the payments.

Quinn had been spending most of his off hours either making decisions in Dean’s place for Fenton Security, mowing the lawn and doing upkeep on the house, or helping Mindy untangle her husband’s financial affairs.

Secretly, Quinn was appalled by how recklessly Dean had borrowed. Maybe he shouldn’t be—Dean always had wanted the nice things in life, and had been a bigger risk-taker than Quinn. But damn it! He’d been living on the financial edge, Quinn was discovering. Balancing fine, because his business was successful and expanding, but without a hell of a lot in the way of reserves. He’d have been in deep doo-doo if the economy had taken a downturn, for example, and a good share of his clients had gone out of business or decided they could do without security.

But Quinn wouldn’t have criticized Dean aloud to anyone, much less to the cute little blonde who’d enjoyed all of Dean’s toys as long as someone else was paying the bills.

“I’ll buy the Camaro,” he heard himself say.

“And paint it black?”

That stung. “Thanks.”

She flushed. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. Dean loved that car.”

“Then…if you’ll take over the payments, it’s yours.”

He was blown away by the offer even though there was no way in hell he could take it. He’d started to think of her as greedy, but, okay, maybe she had some conscience.

“I’ll pay you.” He hesitated, then forced himself to say, “But thanks.”

Her eyes were wide and luminous. “I meant it. Dean would love to know you’d kept his car.”

“And I can afford to buy it.” He held up a hand. “No argument.”

The momentary glow on her face was extinguished, and Quinn felt like a crud.

“Okay,” she said, voice dull. “Do I really have to wait for probate to finish before I sell stuff?”

“We’ll talk to Armstrong,” Quinn promised. Surely the attorney would be reasonable. “If the bills can’t be paid, something has to go.”

Mindy nodded and said like a child, “Are we done?”