Mitchell’s attorney, Marcus Bell, moved separately on the housing issue. Marcus was one of those men who looked relaxed even when dismantling someone’s life with file tabs and deadlines. He had been Mitchell’s friend before he became his lawyer, which made his calm slightly unnerving. He came to their house one evening carrying a leather folder and a bakery box because his wife refused to let him arrive anywhere involving postpartum people without carbohydrates.
Wendy sat on the couch with Paige asleep against her chest while Marcus laid out the structure Mitchell had built years earlier in language even pain and sleep deprivation could follow.
Three years before, Philip had indeed nearly lost the house. Not through bad luck, not exactly, but through vanity disguised as savvy. He had invested retirement funds into a speculative deal pitched by a country club friend who used phrases like leverage position and short horizon upside. The deal collapsed. Instead of telling Suzanne immediately, he borrowed against everything he could touch and pretended the damage was temporary until foreclosure notices made denial impossible.