orionhales
Mark Mercer knows the strange rules of borrowing better than most men. He knows when a lender should be called, when a message should be ignored, when silence becomes dangerous, and how a confident explanation can buy one more day. His wife Naomi has heard too many of those explanations, his children have learned sarcasm from watching them, and the people who lent him money are slowly discovering that Mark's promises have a talent for moving around. What begins with one missed phone call on a cold November morning pulls his family into a month of unpaid debts, awkward truths, neighborhood gossip, and one woman named Vanessa who brings a new kind of trouble to the door. This is a humorous family story about debt, marriage, parenting, denial, and a very average man who believes every consequence can still be handled if he reaches the conversation first.