Page 57 of Omega’s Fold

“She said she’d could list it. She said she didn’t think she could sell it. Not for what I owe. Not without water and with everyone knowing what is happening with the development.”

She nods again, unsurprised.

“Okay, right,” she says. “All right. Then let me lay out the picture as I’m understanding it, and you tell me where I’m wrong. You have a working mortgage on a property whose primary productive asset, the water, has been compromised. The compensation offer that has been made by the developer is materially below the outstanding loan, and the open market is not going to make up the difference. You have continued to make every effort to keep the operation running through partial liquidation of stock. You have missed four scheduled payments and you have come in today, of your own accord, to discuss the position rather than wait for us to come to you. Is that a fair summary?”

I cannot speak for a second.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

She puts her hands flat on the folder. She does not pick the glasses up. She looks at me for a moment without the glasses and her eyes are tired and steady and kind.

“Wyatt. I want to be very direct with you because I don’t think it serves you for me to be anything else. I’m going to tell you the options as I see them and then we’ll see what fits. May I?”

“Yes.”

“Option one. You take the Linden offer. We restructure the deficit as a residual unsecured personal loan in your name and we put you on a long repayment plan at a reduced rate. You walk away from the land with debt, but you walk away. The debt would be manageable on a wage. Are you working off-property anywhere?”

“No.”

“Could you? I mean, in principle. Are you the kind of man who “

“I could try, yes. There’s not a lot of work in Parish Ridge, but I could drive.”

“Right. Option two. You hold on. We agree a payment holiday, formally, for six months. We don’t accrue penalty interest during the holiday. You see if the water situation improves, you see if Linden revises the offer, you see if a buyer materialises. The risk is that none of those things happen and at the end of six months you are six months further into the same hole and we have to have this conversation again on worse terms.”

“And option three.”

“Option three is that I refer you to our specialist insolvency team.”

I look at the hat.

She continues, “It’s a structured process. They’re a good team. They are not in the business of grinding people into the dirt. They will sit with you and they will look at every asset you have, including the equipment and the herd and the truck, and they will work with the bank and with any other creditors to arrive at an arrangement that closes the position. In some cases that is a negotiated discharge of the debt. In some cases it is a managed sale at a price the open market won’t reach.”

I do not say anything. I don’t like any of these options but I can’t see that I have any others.

She does not press. She lets me sit. She picks the glasses up off the folder and she puts them back on, and she waits.

The room is very quiet. Somewhere down the hall a phone rings twice and stops, and outside the window a truck goes past with a bad muffler.

“How long do I have?”

“On the missed payments, I can hold the formal process for another sixty days without going further up the chain. After that, it stops being my decision. I want to be honest about that.”

“Sixty days.”

“Yes. We can talk again in that window.”

“Okay.”

“I’d like you to think about which of the three options you want to walk into. I’d like you to take the weekend, at least. I don’t want you making this decision in this room.”

“Yes.”

“Wyatt.”

“Yes?”