Her brothers found her sitting at a picnic table, Hale perched on her lap and dripping ice cream on her bare legs. Kon and Damien were holding foamy cups of beer, and they sat down on the opposite bench and together they listened to an old Sicilian man singing Sinatra covers.
“I can’t believe you let RJ do the Greasy Pole.” Damien shook his head. “Have you ever seen how hard those guys fall? I value my balls too much for that.”
“I’ve got two kids. What do I need his balls for?” Fran asked, and Damien snorted.
“Can we talk for a minute?” Kon tipped his head to Hale.
“Hale can hear it. He was there for the Yankees game.”
“Just give the grown-ups a minute?” Kon tried again.
She gently lifted Hale to his feet and nudged him over to joinLondon with a scrum of boys throwing snaps on the ground, little twists of paper wrapped around gunpowder that hit the pavement with a pop.
“We all had a lot riding on that Yankees game last week,” Kon said quietly. “They were supposed to win, they had everything going in their favor. It was bad fucking luck. But now we have a problem.”
“What? You were all betting on that game?” Fran asked, looking from Kon to Damien. The betting apps were so insidious, just sitting there on the phone, waiting for you to fritter away your money. Kon and Damien had all the different ones downloaded, FanDuel, DraftKings, Fanatics, you name it.
“It was a lock. The Red Sox pitchers were rested, and it was a bullpen game for the Yankees. The Sox had been crushing the home games and the Yankees were dealing with injuries. It was a no-brainer. But I guess Dad overextended himself.”
“What do you mean,overextended? How much did he lose?”
“Sixty grand.” Kon flicked at the foam on his beer.
“Sixty grand?” Fran didn’t believe it. “Dad doesn’t have sixty grand. He doesn’t even own that car.”
“I know.” He rubbed his face.
“Where’d he get it from?”
“It was his mortgage payments, his car payments, everything in his and Mom’s account.”
“Why would he do that?” Fran asked in disbelief. It seemed so unlike her father.
“Because he was already down. He’d been trying to catch up but got himself in a hole.”
“How much of a hole?”
“He’s twenty thousand behind on the mortgage and has another twenty-something in debt on credit cards.”
“So he’s ahundred thousand dollarsin debt? Does Mom know?”
“She’s pissed. She’s threatening to go stay with Aunt Eileen.”
“He needs a loan,” added Damien.
“You guys.” Fran shook her head sadly. How stupid could they be? Imagine having sixty grand and letting it go in a day. Then there was Fran, carefully saving London’s clothes to pass down to Hale, buying her Costco shampoo, searching for coupon codes every time she ordered anyone a new pair of soccer cleats.
“He needs to catch up on the mortgage payments. When you miss four the bank starts foreclosure. We just need your help, Fran. We’ll chip in next month when we have something.”
She looked at her brother. Kon had held her head underwater in the swimming pool as a kid. Kon had locked her out of the house while her parents were at an anniversary party. Kon had taken her Halloween candy, had kicked a soccer ball at her as hard as he could, had called her “the Unibrow” until she was an adult. And yet. This was her father.
“I don’t have a hundred grand, guys.” Fran stood up from the table.
“Just talk to RJ. See what you can come up with,” Kon wheedled. “He owns his own business. You know he has it.”
“I’m not asking RJ.” Hale had finished his ice cream. His face was sticky with vanilla, and he was trying to get the bigger boys to give him one of the little snaps to throw.
“It’s your father, Fran. And Mom. They’re going to lose the house where they raised you,” Damien called, but she pretended she couldn’t hear him over the music.
