The county website showed three liens on Greater Hope Fellowship. Unpaid loans. A construction company suing over a building they finished two years ago and never got paid for.
Total owed: just over a million dollars.
The final notice was dated last month. If the money wasn't paid by the end of the year, the bank would take the church.
Gregory sat in his car outside that church at 6 a.m., reading it over and over.
He thought about how Raymond started coming around more after Diane died. The dinners. The "mentoring." How he always asked Simone about her plans after graduation.
Gregory had called it kindness.
At 7 a.m. the church secretary pulled in. Lorraine. Twenty years at that church. One look at Gregory's face and she stopped walking.
"You found out," she said.
"Found out what, Lorraine?"
She looked around the empty lot. Then she got in his passenger seat.
"I didn't know if I should say anything. But I can't sleep anymore."
She told him everything.
Two weeks ago she'd walked into Raymond's office while he was on the phone with the bank. "The money's coming," he said. "By the end of the month. I've got a family member coming into an inheritance."
A family member.
"I figured he meant a cousin," Lorraine said. "Then yesterday he asked me to prepare a marriage certificate. With Simone's name on it."
Gregory's hands tightened on the wheel.
"Where are they now?"
"He said they're going to the bank this morning. Something about a joint account."
Gregory checked the clock. 7:20.
The bank opened at nine.
He started the car.
As he pulled out of the lot, his phone buzzed. A text from Simone.
"Dad, please come to the bank at 9. I need you there. Don't tell Raymond I asked."
This is a fictional story. Names, characters and events are invented. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.
