Losing Everything

Chapter 10.6

“Okay,” Erica said, still grinning. “So Jake leaves, and…”

“And I don’t know. Bitmo falls apart. Everything suddenly starts going wrong, all at once. So we get put into receivership, and they tell us to let the staff go home, and close the doors, and apparently we’re done.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“So that’s it? You’re bankrupt?”

Lucy nodded slowly.

Erica looked at Lucy, thinking. “Yeah,” she said. “But something else is going on, too. Jake’s done something, hasn’t he?”

“Apparently.”

“Do you know what?”

“Not really.” Lucy sighed. “They’re trying to blame me for everything that went wrong.”

“Who is, Jake and…”

“Jake and the board. Jake and everyone.”

“Blame you how?”

“There’s a lot of creditors. A lot of people owned money. Those people are all after me.”

“After you, like you personally?”

“Trying to take me to court and make me pay them, yep.”

“With your own money?”

Lucy nodded.

“Oh,” Erica said, and thought for a moment. “But isn’t that meant to be separate...? Aren’t company money problems separate from your own money?”

Lucy shrugged.

“Wasn’t it separate?” Erica said. “Because mine is.”

“I thought it was.”

“But no?”

“Apparently I signed personal guarantees. Which I would have, perhaps, maybe, if someone had actually asked me to. But they didn’t ask, so I had no idea I had.”

“I don’t understand,” Erica said.

“I don’t either.”

“No, I mean, I don’t get what you’re saying… Like, someone faked your name on legal papers?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not really. I think I just signed something without reading it, and that turns out to be a really bad idea.”

Erica nodded.

“It’s my own fault,” Lucy said, after a moment. “And I can’t prove it anyway.”

“Oh, Lucy…”

“Yeah, I know. But still my own fault. Jake always did the money. And if your money guy is out to get you, and you trust him enough to sign anything he gives you to sign… then yeah. I’m kind of fucked now.”

“But there must be some…”

“I think it’s down to who’s more believable, basically. Which is mostly about who said what and why and when they said it and who knew about everything beforehand. So now Jake’s saying I did everything on my own, hiding it from him, and so it’s all my fault. I mean, obviously he’s saying that.”

“So he’s lying?”

“Yeah. Basically. To cover his ass.”

“Did he cause the problems? Is that why?”

“Nah, not really. Sort of, but mostly it was just… shit. All the shit, all at once. The economy and the recession and the high dollar. Our interest bills getting bigger, which sucked money out of new development. And we had to rewrite a lot of code for compatibility with new Windows, and I didn’t know enough to do it, so we decided I should keep doing management instead of learning how to do that, and hire in people instead, which turned out to be a really bad idea. Because then the contractors left, and we still had no in-house expertise, so then we needed to hire new consultants any time we needed changes to the code.”

Erica nodded.

“So lots of crap,” Lucy said. “Lots and lots of crap. All sorts of things like that, one after another, but nothing particular, and not Jake especially, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s… I don’t know. It’s what happens. Life and shit. It doesn’t matter as much as it should. Not like you should have mattered to me.”

Erica sat there for a moment, looking at Lucy, then she got up quite suddenly, and took the plates to the sink.

Lucy watched, unsure if she’d said something wrong. She probably had, she thought. She probably shouldn’t have said the last bit about Erica mattering. She needed to stop saying things like that all the time, without thinking.

She would remember, next time. She’d been distracted by thinking about her problems right then.