My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,26
someone who would take care of it the way it deserved.
I loved the pink siding, and the Victorian scrollwork on the gables, and the beaded trim all along the front porch. I loved the double-door front entry, and the wavy antique glass windows, and all the old tile in the bathrooms.
The only thing I didn’t love was how much it was going to cost to fix it all up. I’d been fresh out of college when Meemaw died, and I’d had to borrow money from my parents just to cover the taxes on the house the first few years. Aunt Birdie had let me live in her garage apartment rent-free so I could save my money to fix up the house. It had taken three years just to get the place inhabitable enough that I could move in, and I still had a lot of work to do on it.
I’d get there though. Slowly but surely.
On my way in the front door, I fetched the mail out of the mailbox. I headed into the kitchen and grabbed a beer out of the fridge as I flipped through it. Most of the mail was junk, as per usual. The only thing I didn’t throw straight into the recycling bin was a letter from the homeowners’ association. I opened my beer and took a long drink before I tore open the envelope to see what they wanted.
A black, oily tendril of anxiety wrapped around my stomach as I read the letter. By the time I’d gotten to the end, that tendril had been joined by a dozen others that had twisted into a giant knot of panic in my gut.
The letter claimed I’d been delinquent in paying a number of previously assessed fines for violations of HOA rules. Except I’d never received a notice of any fines or violations. I definitely would have remembered something like that.
Owing to this alleged delinquency, the attorneys for my homeowners’ association were writing to inform me they’d be filing a lien on my house on the HOA’s behalf unless all fines, fees, and late charges were paid within thirty days.
They’d included a list of the violations, all of which had to do with exterior property maintenance, and all of which I fully admitted I was guilty of. But it wasn’t like the condition of the house was anything new. Most of the cited issues had existed for years—long before I’d even inherited the place. Why had they suddenly decided to enforce the HOA rules now? And why was this the first I was hearing about it?
The worst part was that I’d been assessed late fees on each and every fine on an ongoing monthly basis going back three years. Three years! Without a single word to me, they’d been quietly ratcheting up my debt until the number was so unimaginably large I’d never be able to pay it.
I could barely even stand to look at the total, it was so big.
I felt myself start to hyperventilate and sank down on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. Pressing my cold beer bottle against my forehead, I tried to calm myself down.
This had to be a mistake. It was fixable. There was a way through this, and I’d figure it out.
I didn’t understand how they could spring this on me out of nowhere. It wasn’t fair.
Not that fairness mattered. People got away with shitty stuff all the time that wasn’t fair. They intimidated and threatened and bullied their way through other people’s lives, banking on the fact that most folks wouldn’t have the resources to fight them.
Just like I didn’t have the resources to fight this. I didn’t have a lawyer to protect me or the money to hire one. My family would be willing to help me as much as they could, but none of them were exactly swimming in extra cash. My parents needed their retirement savings to live on. Birdie worked three part-time jobs to pay her modest living expenses. All of Josh’s money went right back into the farm.
As I stared at the letter, the question that kept running through my head was why now? When I’d owned this place for years, and it had sat here empty and ignored for a good long while before that. I hadn’t heard a peep from the HOA before today. I’d honestly forgotten there even was one. So why had they suddenly come at me, guns a-blazing?