Aveline
The apartment I lived in before all of this had creaky floors and a radiator that knocked when the temperature dropped. My kitchen window looked out toward the Androscoggin River, and in the early mornings the light came in silver and cold. If the wind was right, the air carried a faint smell of salt and wet wood and the last edge of winter still coming off the water.
It was not a glamorous life. It was mine, and after the years I had spent before getting there, that distinction mattered more than I had words for. I had moved to Brunswick, Maine, deliberately.
I had left Boston because Boston was loud in ways I could no longer endure. Up here my days were smaller and better ordered. I worked as an accountant, which suited me because numbers, unlike people, rarely lie unless someone has forced them to.
My apartment was plain but I had made it pleasant. A blue kettle on the stove. A narrow shelf of books.
Two old armchairs by the window, one better than the other. A coffee pot that ran nearly all day. A life built around routine and the quiet relief of not having to explain myself to anyone.
That Tuesday morning started like every other one. I was at my desk with my coffee, half listening to the office heater, working through routine emails, when my phone rang. Unknown number.
I almost let it go to voicemail. Usually I did. But something in me, some quiet internal alarm that I have since learned to take seriously, said to answer it.
So I did. “Hello, is this Aveline Clark?”
The voice was professional and practiced, the tone of someone who has already made this call ten times before noon. “Yes.”
“This is Cressa with Coastal Trust Bank.
We’re calling regarding your mortgage balance of five hundred thousand dollars. We’ve sent several notices, but the account remains overdue.”
For a second or two, my brain simply refused to process the sentence. I sat there staring at the wall above my desk calendar while the words suspended themselves in the air around me, unfinished, waiting for sense to catch up to sound.
Then sense arrived. “I’m sorry,” I said. Even to my own ears my voice sounded thinner than usual.
“I don’t have a mortgage.”
The sound of someone checking a screen. A brief pause. “Ma’am, our records show your full name, date of birth, and social security number.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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