“Already?” she breathed, her heart beating hard. “That was so fast.”

Ted gave a short, bitter laugh. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said. “I thought I could find another job, and then I could just tell you that I changed firms. Use the signing bonus to pay back what I owed. Move on somehow. But I was kidding myself. There aren’t any jobs to find right now.”

Maja looked around the apartment. Ted didn’t look like someone who had just had a shock. He looked resigned. Suddenly she understood. “When?” she asked.

“Weeks ago. Not long after we heard about the house party. Our department was the first to make cuts. Which is insane, because the guy who came up with these bullshit trades is still there. It’s a fucking joke,” Ted spat.

Maja was stunned. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she fought a rising sense of panic. “You didn’t tell me. I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I,” Ted countered, “with the house a wreck and the bills piling up?” His words sounded almost like an accusation. “I just couldn’t. How could I tell you that it was all gone? I had to try to fix it.”

“What do you mean it’s all gone?” Maja asked, feeling sick.

Ted didn’t meet her eye. “The money,” he said. “Everything. Did you read the article? $2 a share. They might as well have set it all on fire.” He spoke mechanically, staring out of the window. “I knew the stock would take a hit—the whole market is down—and all of the contingent stock disappeared when I was laid off. But I didn’t know it would be that bad. Almost everything we have was tied up in the firm’s stock. We have about eight thousand shares, Maja. Last year, that was a little over a million dollars. Today that’s fifteen grand.”

The numbers were breathtaking. Maja knew their money was bound up in Foxfield’s stock, but it had never occurred to her the stock could suddenly be totally worthless.

“We have other savings,” she said. “You’re going to find another job.”

“Maja, we are leveraged to the hilt,” Ted said. “Have you ever looked at what we spend every month? We have the rent on the apartment, the construction loan, furniture for the new house, and a hundred small bills that add up—the gym membership, the beach house we went in on for August. There haven’t been cash bonuses in six months—we were already stretched pretty thin when this happened. The credit cards are maxed out.” He sounded slightly hysterical. “And the health insurance,” he added. “Do you know what that costs without the firm subsidizing it? You might as well know, I put it on the credit card this month, along with everything else. You have no idea, Maja.”