Issac came back on the line. “…many of them?”

“Sorry,” Brad said. “You faded out there for a minute. Say it again.”

“I said, maybe we should contact the other employees and see if they know anything. How many of the bank’s staff do you think you have out there?”

“Another one!” Bill F. called out.

Brad closed his eyes. “All of them,” he said.

4

The bank had turned them down.

Jen had not gotten the word over the phone, in person or through a formal letter. She’d gotten a text. Lane had gotten the same text, and she had called him only seconds before he’d been about to call her. Such a means of notification seemed far too casual for such an important decision, and she’d wondered aloud to Lane if such a move was legal. It certainly didn’t seem ethical, and she’d said that maybe they should report the bank to the Better Business Bureau.

“It won’t make us any more eligible,” he’d told her.

“Why aren’t we eligible? Even with my parents co-signing, we’re still too big a risk?”

“I guess so.”

A feeling of dejection had settled over her. “So we’re permanent renters. For the rest of our lives.”

The real estate agent had had another idea, though. She’d texted both of them moments later and said she was working on alternative financing. She wanted to meet at the house to talk to them about it rather than at her office, which made Jen suspect it might not be completely on the up and up, but it cost nothing to hear her out, and at this point what did they have to lose?

Lane had instantly called Jen back. “We’re still in!”

“Let’s hear what it is first. I’ll meet you at the diner after work. We need to go together and show up at the same time so she doesn’t have a chance to lobby one of us alone.”

“You want to call her and set it up?”

“Okay. See you at five?”

“I’ll be there, babe.”

The diner was B.B.’s Roadside Diner on the south end of town. Montgomery actually had two diners, as well as a Denny’s, but B.B.’s was the one they preferred, and they ate there at least once a week, on days she was too tired to cook.

Jen got off a few minutes early and waited for him in the booth closest to the door, attempting to drink Coke through a paper straw that had flattened with the very first suck and that she was unsuccessfully trying to pinch back into shape. At the next booth over, an overly made-up middle-aged woman was snuggling next to a sleazy looking older man, both of them engaging in an embarrassingly exaggerated display of affection.

In movies, when women sensuously sucked on men’s fingers, it seemed arousing and provocative because it brought to mind oral sex. But she’d tried it once with Lane, and his finger had been rough and unappealing, the skin tasting of old onion and barbecue sauce from the hamburger he’d eaten for lunch. The whole thing had been disagreeable, and after that she had sworn off getting sex tips from films.