The whole thing sounded like a total nightmare.
Cami studied the sheet of paper in her hand. "Three thousand dollars?"
I nodded. "And that's justoneof the fines. There's a whole bunch of them."
She looked up. "So your cousin had to payallof these?"
"Sure," I said. "Unless he made the repairs –orsold it to someone who would."
"So what are you saying?" she asked. "He sold it to avoid the fines?"
I nodded again. "He felt like he had to. Whether it was fines or repairs, there's no way he could've paidallof them." I paused. "Or should I say there's no wayIcould've paid all of them."
And yet, it would've been nice to have the chance to try.
I was still miffed at Jason for not telling me what had been going on. He'dclaimedthat he hadn't wanted to worry me during my final semester of college. But even now, I was finding this hard to believe.
Probably, Jason had been too afraid to admit that he'd let the place fall to pieces around him. And then, he'd been afraid of Brody.
That was a story in and of itself.
Cami's eyebrows furrowed. "So basically, your cousin wasforcedto sell?"
"Right." I'd explained all of this to Cami already in painful detail. But from the look on her face, it had taken the paperwork to truly drive the point home.
It had been the same way with me.
But there was one particular document that really broke my heart. I stood from the chair and reached toward the pile of papers. I began rummaging through it until I found the thing I was looking for.
It didn't take long for me to locate it, probably because in a fit of anger last night, I'd actually wadded it up and hurled it against the wall.
Oh sure, I'd tried to straighten it out afterward, because the document wasn't officially mine. But I'd done a sorry job of it, which meant that it stuck out like a sore thumb.
I handed it to Cami and waited in silence for her to read it.
The document was a personal letter from Jason to Brody, where Jason had practically begged Brody to buy onlyhalfof the house, meaning Jason's half, which would've leftmyhalf intact.
In the letter, Jason had confessed that his younger cousin – meaning me, of course – secretly owned half of the property and was, in Jason's owns words, "emotionally attached to the place."
In that same letter, Jason had gone into an awkward amount of detail on how I'd been working two jobs to keep up with the payments and how I'd lived there with my grandparents back in high school.
And on and on.
The letter was five pages long and pretty darn embarrassing, even if itwasall true.
Embarrassing or not, I had to give Jason at least some credit for trying. Of course, his idea was totally impractical. I mean, why would Brody – or any other investor – be willing to buy only half of a house?
It didn't help that the secret owner – again, meaning me – appeared nowhere on the deed or in any other legal document related to the property.
And itespeciallydidn't help that buyer – meaning Brody – totally hated me at the time of the transaction.
This was beyond obvious by the way Brody had responded to Jason's letter. He'd returned it with only a handwritten note, scrawled across the bottom of the letter's first page.
The note said, and I quote,"Not my problem."
When Cami finished reading the letter, she flipped back to the beginning and gave it a long, perplexed look. Finally, she looked up. "Not my problem? What does that mean?"
"It means he's a jerk, that's what."
