Page 222 of The First Taste

"With what money?" I ask, my words coming off a little more venomous than I really meant them to be.

Aunt Minnie goes quiet, something painful passing through her expression. I give her a little smile. I tilt my head.

"What?" I ask.

She shrugs one shoulder, her hands nervously gripping the front of her dress. "We can talk about it after the holidays. I don't want to stress you out right now."

My pulse picks up, and I grow tense. I cross my arms and furrow my brow. "Well, now you have to tell me. What are you talking about?"

Minnie can't meet my gaze. She looks down at the floor, pawing it with her heavy shoe. "Well… I didn't want to loop you in on this or anything. But the store is in some debt."

I reach up, placing my hand around my own throat. "Since when?"

She struggles again. "A few months ago, Hope House needed money for roof repairs. So, I offered to pay for it. But then it turned into foundation problems and issues with zoning. Blah, blah, blah. They were having issues getting financing, so I loaned them some."

“How much?” I narrowed my eyes on her face. "Where did you get the money?"

"A friend of a friend. He provides loans for people in need."

"What does that even mean? Is he a bank?"

"No. He is more of a businessperson. He manages a ton of these small loans,” she says.

"Small loans? I do not understand. If he is not related to a bank, then that means that he is a private financier. And that means he can charge you a ton of interest. Is that what you don't want me to be mad about?"

Aunt Minnie drops her gaze to the floor again. "Well, I was planning on paying him back when I got the money from a busy Christmas season."

My breath catches. "How much money are we talking about? And how did you even get it?" Minnie looks straight at me, her brown eyes worried. "At first, it was just ten thousand. But that quickly became twenty, then forty, then…" She trails off. "I lent the administrator at Hope House almost one hundred thousand dollars."

For a brief moment, my mind is filled with static and crackling. I blink and try to wrap my head around that figure. "One hundred thousand dollars? Where did you even get that? The last time that you tried to lend Hope House money, the bank wouldn't give you a second mortgage on your house. So where did you go to get that kind of money?"

Aunt Minnie licks her lips and looks at me, holding a hand out to forestall my protest. "You can't be mad. After all, it's for a good cause. If I didn't lend them the money they needed, the people at the shelter were looking at having to rebuild all the walls. On top of that, they needed a mold inspection and…”

“Aunt Minnie. Be serious. Did you get the money from a loan shark?”

Her expression pinches and she looks away. “Some people might call him that, yes.”

For several seconds, I can’t speak. “And what did you put up as collateral?”

Her mouth twists. “The bungalow. It’s the only thing they would accept.”

My pulse pounds. I swallow hard, anger rising like a tidal wave in my chest.

“So now you have to pay some crook back a hundred thousand dollars plus some crazy amount of interest or he takes our house? Is that the sum of things?”

Aunt Minnie winces. “I have to start paying him back in a couple of months. That’s plenty of time for me to figure it out.”

“Figure it out?!” My exclamation bursts from my lips. “Aunt Minnie, we don’t have that kind of money! In fact, we are already in the hole for those stupid books that the Morgans don’t want! How can you think that we are going to figure it out?”

Minnie licks her lips and runs a hand over her hair. “Someone will come through. You’ll see. Just have a little faith.”

My hands bunch into fists and I drop them to my sides, feeling another pulse of anger throb through me. I want to yell. I want to call her names. To demand to know why she has put us both in such an impossible situation. But the way she is looking at me right now, her eyes pleading with me not to be angry, keeps me from unleashing my voice.

This is not the first time that I have been extremely let down in my life, nor will it be the last. Smoothing my hands down the front of my coat, I collect myself. I clear my throat, trying to school my expression.

“Okay. We should talk about this again sometime when I am less emotional.”

Minnie reaches out and grabs my forearm, her gaze searching my face. “You aren’t mad, are you Talia?”