“However what?” my father asked, hope flickering in his eyes like a dying candle.
“I spoke to my attorney. The bank is willing to drop the criminal referral—the jail time—if the debt is acknowledged and a repayment plan is executed immediately. Personally. By you.”
My mother gasped. “We don’t have ninety-five thousand dollars! You know that! That’s why we used your card!”
“Then you’ll have to find it,” I said. “Or you can explain to the judge why you forged my signature.”
I stepped back and pulled a document from the entry table. David Thorne had drawn it up that morning. It wasn’t a standard repayment plan. It was a capitulation.
Civil Confession of Judgment.
“What is this?” my father asked, taking the papers with shaking hands.
“It’s an agreement,” I explained. “It states that you accept full liability for the unauthorized charges. It states that you agree to repay the principal plus the interest the bank charges. And it grants a lien against your house as collateral.”
“Our house?” my mother screamed. “You’re trying to take our home?”
“I’m trying to keep you out of prison,” I countered, my voice sharp. “If you don’t sign, the bank presses charges on Monday. I can’t stop them. This is the only lifeboat I could build for you.”
It was a bluff, partially. The bank would have preferred a settlement to a trial, but the threat of prison was the only currency my parents understood.
My father looked at the paper. He looked at me. For the first time, he didn’t see his daughter. He saw a creditor.
“We’ll have to sell the cabin,” he whispered. “We’ll have to liquidate your mother’s IRA.”
“Then you better call your broker,” I said. “Because the first payment is due in thirty days.”
“You are evil,” my mother hissed, tears streaming down her face—not tears of sorrow, but tears of rage. “You are a cold, heartless bitch. We raised you! We fed you!”
“And now I’m paying you back,” I said. “The cost of raising a child to age eighteen is roughly two hundred thousand dollars. You stole half of that in one week. Consider us even.”
I held out the pen.
