The person sitting in the back of the storage unit was my son.
Not a little kid anymore either. Twenty-three years old, six-foot-two, wearing one of my old Nebraska hoodies like he lived there. There was an air mattress set up behind the stacked boxes and a little folding table with a coffee maker on it.
I honestly thought for a second maybe he’d lost his apartment and they were hiding it from me out of embarrassment.
Then my son stood up and said, “Mom told me you still hadn’t done it.”
Done what.
Neither of them answered right away. My wife just kept rubbing her forehead with those dirty work gloves on. Finally she said, “The refinancing paperwork.”
That’s when it clicked.
About eight months ago I took money out against the house after my construction company slowed down. I told everybody it was temporary until a few contracts came through.
Apparently “temporary” turned into three missed payments I never told anybody about.
My wife had found the foreclosure notices before I did because I stopped checking the mail regularly once collection calls started.
She said she asked me over and over to sell the house before things got worse. I kept saying I could fix it.
Meanwhile she’d been quietly moving family stuff out so the bank wouldn’t take everything when the foreclosure finally hit.
The part that got me was my son already knew.
Not recently either. For months.
He’d been helping her rent the storage unit and moving things on weekends while I thought he was visiting friends back in Omaha.
I asked why nobody just told me directly.
My son laughed one time. Not mean exactly. Just tired.
Then he reached into a plastic file bin beside the mattress and handed me a certified letter addressed to me that had been opened already.
Final foreclosure date:
Monday morning.
It was Friday night.