Chapter 8 - The Audit and the Foreclosure Notice
By the end of November, the house of cards had completely collapsed into rubble.
The End Zone Lounge was formally shut down by the Texas Comptroller’s Office for unpaid state sales taxes and commercial lease default. The fixtures, commercial refrigerators, and draft systems were seized and auctioned on the courthouse steps to satisfy the seventy-four thousand dollars in outstanding liens.
Uncle Jeff’s suburban home was placed into non-judicial foreclosure after he failed to cure the thirty-day mortgage default. He was forced to move into a tiny, rundown studio apartment behind a bowling alley in South Austin, living off a meager part-time salary delivering auto parts.
Claire’s legal troubles resulted in a strict diversion program: she was ordered to perform three hundred hours of community service at a local food bank and had twenty percent of her marketing wages garnished to repay the daycare debt.
And my mother, Evelyn, was served with a thirty-day notice to vacate her luxury West Lake apartment.
She couldn't afford the twenty-eight-hundred-dollar monthly rent on her modest social security check. None of her wealthy society friends offered her a spare bedroom once the truth about her trust liquidation became public knowledge.
On a cold Sunday afternoon in December, I sat in my living room, watching the rain beat against the glass.
My doorbell chimed softly.
I opened the door to find my mother standing on the porch.
She wasn't wearing her burgundy designer gown. She didn't have her pearls. She wore a faded wool coat, carrying an umbrella with a broken spoke, looking like a woman who had aged twenty years in three months.
May you like
She looked at me, her lower lip trembling.
“Adam…” she whispered. “May I come in?”
