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“You might be able to afford it once this place sells.” Sally crunched a chip. “You’ll get one-third of the selling price. Unless there’s a mortgage that could be a lot of money.”
Liz frowned. Silly as it sounded, she actually hadn’t considered that she could buy her old apartment. The mortgage had been paid years ago, but she had no idea what her third of the house sale would be. The house still needed work, and she wasn’t sure how much they could sell it for. But did she even want to buy her old place? That seemed like a closed chapter in her life. She needed to open a new one.
“That’s right,” Emma said. “You can live in lots of places… maybe even here.”
“Here?”
“Sure, you’d have enough for a down payment, or maybe you could work a deal with your siblings and not even have to get a loan.” Sally chomped on her sandwich. “My friend Elsie’s granddaughter did that after Elsie passed. She worked out some deal with her cousins and ended up with the house.”
“It would be really great if you could stay,” Emma said. “Bunny said you’re just the right type for our little neighborhood.”
But Liz was hardly listening. She was too busy wondering if it was even remotely possible for her to work out a deal with her brother and sister. And if it was, how exactly would she go about that?
* * *
After they finished up Emma’s delicious sandwiches and Sally called it quits for the day, Liz called the investment broker with whom she had her retirement savings. She wanted to see if she could possibly use the leverage of her share of the property and her own retirement savings to take out some sort of a loan to pay her brother and sister.
He mentioned some possibilities, including taking out a loan against her retirement savings to pay them. He also asked some questions that she didn’t know the answers to. What was the house worth? Would her siblings want a lump sum right away, or would they be willing to take payments?
But even if she could get some sort of loan like that, how would she make the payments? And there would be other household expenses, not to mention the property taxes. Without a big mortgage, all of that would be minimal, but she’d still need to supplement her income with a job. She had only a limited amount of savings to last her until she could collect Social Security and start tapping into her 401k.
But, at least, a plan was forming, and she felt more hopeful for the future than she had in a long time.
Would her siblings agree? There was only one way to find out. She never asked for favors for herself, but the way Sally had put it, it didn’t seem like it would be too much of a favor to let her use her portion for a down payment.
Brimming with determination to make her plan work, she called her sister.
“Liz! How’s it going?” Shelly sounded a bit distracted. Liz hoped this wasn’t a bad time because she wanted an answer right away.
“You won’t believe it. The house looks so nice… almost too nice.”
There was a beat of silence on the end of the line. “Huh? Too nice? Is that a problem?”
“Well, I had an idea, and I thought maybe—”
“Hold on, sorry…” Liz heard muffled sounds, as if Shelly had put the phone aside and was talking to someone else. Then Shelly came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Liz. I’m going to have to call you back later.”
“But I just had this one thing, really quick—”
It was too late. Shelly had already hung up.
Maybe Liz would have better luck with her brother.
She made a cup of tea and then called Peter.
“Liz. Hi.” Peter sounded very hesitant and guarded, which was odd. He was usually happy to hear from her.
“Hi, Peter. I’m just calling to update you on the house. I’ve cleaned out most of it and gotten it painted. It looks fantastic.”
“That’s great. I appreciate you doing all this work. Okay, well… gotta run.”
“Wait a minute!” Why was Peter acting so weird? He usually chatted more. “I actually have an idea for the house, and I wanted to feel you out about it.”
“An idea? Whatever you want to do, it is fine. You’re doing a great job fixing it up. You can tell me about it later. I have an important—”
So Peter was going to brush her off too? Liz was sick of it, so she interrupted him. “No, Peter, really. I want to talk to you about this right now.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m being called into a meeting.” Peter hung up.
