Chapter 5 - Desperation and False Allies
By the end of the second week, the pressure began to crack the Hernandez family along its oldest fault lines.
Vanessa spent four days sitting on her boucle sofa in Evanston, calling every personal loan agency she could find on Google.
"What do you mean, debt-to-income ratio?" she shouted into her phone on Thursday morning, her living room littered with empty takeout containers and crumpled papers. "I have an eighty-thousand-dollar salary! I’m an associate marketing director!"
"Yes, Ms. Hernandez," the loan officer from Discover Financial replied with clinical, soul-crushing politeness. "Your salary is eighty thousand, but our credit report indicates you carry twenty-eight thousand dollars in revolving credit card debt across four separate cards, an auto loan balance of thirty-one thousand dollars on an Audi Q3, and your primary mortgage obligation is thirty-one hundred dollars per month. Without the supplemental verified recurring non-wage transfer from the secondary account that was previously on file, your debt-to-income ratio sits at sixty-eight percent. We cannot extend a personal consolidation loan at this time."
Vanessa hung up without saying goodbye. She threw her phone onto the cushions, buried her face in her hands, and let out a dry, ragged scream.
She tried calling her boyfriend of eight months, Julian, an account executive who drove a leased BMW and lived in a high-rise in River North.
"Babe," Julian said when she finally broke down and asked him for a short-term five-thousand-dollar bridge loan. "Look, you know I love you, right? But mixing money and dating? That’s like... a major boundary violation for me. My dad always said, never lend money to family or girlfriends. It ruins the dynamic. Why don't you just ask your sister to chill out?"
"She won't talk to me!" Vanessa cried. "She blocked my number! She blocked me on Instagram! She’s acting like a complete monster!"
"Well... that sucks, babe. Really. Let me know how it goes, okay? I have a client lunch at Gibson’s in ten minutes."
The line went dead.
Vanessa looked around her immaculate, beautifully decorated condo. The sunlight was pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating the polished wood floors she had bragged about for five years.
For the first time in her life, she realized that none of it had ever belonged to her. It had been built on a scaffolding made entirely of Daniela’s quiet, unacknowledged labor. And now that the scaffolding had been pulled away, the whole structure was sliding toward the edge of a cliff.
***
Meanwhile, on North Paulina Street, Arthur Hernandez was losing his mind.
He sat across the desk from Hector Salgado, an attorney he had hired with five hundred dollars borrowed from his pension fund. Salgado was a neighborhood lawyer whose office was situated above a bakery on Milwaukee Avenue; the room smelled permanently of powdered sugar and stale paper.
Salgado adjusted his thick spectacles, set down the photocopies of the 2019 quitclaim deed, and leaned back in his squeaking leather chair.
"Arthur," Salgado said, shaking his head slowly. "I’m going to be straight with you. You don't have a case."
"What do you mean, I don't have a case?" Arthur demanded, his hands gripping the armrests. "We signed that paper under duress! My brother Hector was suing me! We only put it in Daniela’s name to protect the asset!"
Salgado let out a dry, humorless chuckle. "Arthur, do you know what the legal term for that is? It’s called a fraudulent conveyance. If you walk into a Cook County chancery court and tell a judge that you transferred your real estate to your daughter specifically to evade a potential civil judgment from a creditor, the judge won't give you the apartment back. The judge will refer the matter to the state's attorney for fraud."
Arthur’s mouth dropped open. A cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck.
"Furthermore," Salgado continued, tapping the document with his pen, "there is no 'duress' here. Look at page two. You signed in front of a licensed notary. There is an explicit clause stating: *'Grantors Arthur and Teresa Hernandez acknowledge the conveyance is made freely, voluntarily, and for valuable consideration.'* And who has been paying the property taxes for the last five years?"
Arthur swallowed hard. "Daniela."
"And who paid the special assessment for the new roof three years ago?"
"Daniela," Arthur whispered.
"Then Daniela is the owner," Salgado said, closing the file and pushing it back across the desk. "Under the law, you and your wife are guests whose invitation has expired. If you don't sign the lease she offered you, she has every legal right to have the sheriff remove your furniture onto the curb on the thirty-first of this month. My advice? Sign the lease. Or find a smaller apartment in Berwyn."
Arthur walked out of the lawyer’s office into the brisk Chicago autumn air. His knees ached with every step down the concrete stairs.
He didn't take the bus. He walked thirty blocks back to Paulina Street, his hands jammed deep into his coat pockets, his mind replaying the last five years.
He remembered the day Chloe was born. He remembered holding the tiny girl in the hospital room while Daniela lay exhausted in the bed. He remembered how Daniela had looked at him with tears in her eyes and whispered, *'Dad, I’m so glad you’re here.'*
And then he remembered Sunday night.
He remembered how Teresa had snatched that bowl of soup away. He remembered the small, bewildered look on Chloe’s face as she watched the noodles slide down the drain.
And Arthur remembered what he had done.
He hadn't yelled at Teresa. He hadn't stopped her. Instead, he had walked over to the front door, picked up his granddaughter’s stroller, and set it out in the hallway like an old sack of laundry.
He had done it because it was easier to appease Teresa’s bitter, controlling temper than to stand up for his own child. He had done it because he was a coward who valued his own peace and quiet over his daughter’s dignity.
When Arthur reached the apartment, Teresa was at the dining room table, surrounded by legal pads.
"Arthur!" she yelled the moment he opened the door. "What did the lawyer say? When are we going to court? I want to sue her for emotional distress! I want to sue that snake Marcus Vance for drafting those illegal papers!"
Arthur closed the door behind him. He didn't take off his coat. He stood in the entryway, looking at his wife of thirty-five years.
"There is no court, Teresa," Arthur said, his voice completely flat.
Teresa froze, a pen poised in her hand. "What did you say?"
"We don't own this place," Arthur said. "We haven't owned it for five years. Daniela owns it. The lawyer said if we go to court, we could be investigated for fraud."
"That lawyer is an idiot!" Teresa screamed, standing up so fast her chair screeched against the floor. "Find another one! Call your cousin Roberto! Call someone who knows what they're doing!"
"Roberto is an accountant, Teresa!" Arthur yelled back, his voice rising for the first time in twenty years, surprising even himself. "No lawyer can change this! We gave her the house! We gave it to her so Hector wouldn't take it, and then we treated her like a maid! We threw her daughter's food down the drain!"
"She owed us that soup!" Teresa shrieked back, her face contorting with rage. "She lived under my roof! She brought her bastard problems into my home!"
"Her husband left her, Teresa!" Arthur shouted, his face turning dark crimson. "She didn't commit a crime! She was trying to survive! And we kicked her out into the cold!"
"Get out!" Teresa screamed, pointing a trembling finger toward the hallway. "If you’re going to defend her, get out of this house with her!"
Arthur looked at his wife. He looked at the walls he had painted, the baseboards he had caulked, the home he had lived in for more than two decades.
May you like
"Don't worry," Arthur whispered, turning the brass deadbolt. "We’re all getting out in two weeks anyway."
***
