“I heard you,” I said. “Your apology will be included in the record of this call.”
She started crying after that. I ended the conversation there.
Back in Virginia, Eleanor tried desperately to stop the foreclosure process on her house. Nothing about it was immediate or dramatic. No truck showed up to haul her furniture out onto the lawn. She simply
received notices, deadlines, and repeated opportunities to cure the default. She could have sold the property voluntarily and walked away with a meaningful chunk of equity still in her pocket.
Instead, she refused every single option offered to her.
She told relatives up and down the family tree that I was trying to throw an elderly widow out onto the street. She posted photographs of the house online, describing it as the Cole family legacy under attack. She conveniently left out the part where I had paid the overdue mortgage myself, cleared her tax
