Chapter 4: The Call from Wendy V.
The name had been in his head since the night he'd looked at Jessi's phone.
*Wendy V.*
He hadn't asked about it.
There had been too much else.
But three days after the visit to Ruth's apartment, while Jessi was at her actual office in Tempe and Leo was at school, Ivan's phone buzzed with a call from an unknown number.
He almost didn't answer.
"Is this Ivan?" A woman's voice.
Brisk, professional, not unfriendly.
"It is."
"My name is Wendy Vasquez.
I'm a care coordinator at Mesa Community Elder Services.
I work with your wife."
He sat up straighter.
"Okay."
"I'm calling because Jessi listed you as an emergency contact for Ruth Calloway's file about six weeks ago.
She may not have mentioned that."
"She didn't."
A brief pause.
"I see.
I'm calling because we have a situation with Ruth's housing.
The building owner has submitted a notice of intent to convert the property.
All tenants have sixty days to vacate."
Ivan was quiet for a moment.
"When did this come through?"
"Jessi received the notice four days ago.
I've been trying to reach her, but she hasn't returned my calls.
I thought—" Wendy paused again.
"I thought perhaps she might need some support in figuring out next steps."
"She hasn't told me about the notice."
"No," Wendy said.
"I didn't think so."
After the call ended, Ivan sat at the kitchen table without moving for a while.
Then he picked up his phone and called Jessi.
It rang four times.
Voicemail.
He didn't leave a message.
He drove to Tempe instead.
Jessi's office was on the second floor of a low beige building near the university.
Her colleague at the front desk recognized Ivan from the company holiday party two years ago and waved him through with a smile that suggested she found the unannounced visit romantic.
Jessi was at her desk with her door half-open.
She was on the phone, her pen moving across a notepad, her reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She looked up when he appeared in the doorway.
Her expression shifted.
Not alarm.
Something more careful than that.
She said something brief into the phone and set it down.
"Ivan.
What's wrong?
Is Leo—"
"Leo's fine.
I got a call from Wendy Vasquez."
The pen stopped moving.
"She told me about the eviction notice," he said.
"The sixty days."
Jessi took her glasses off her head and set them on the desk.
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
"When I had a solution.
I didn't want to bring you a problem without a solution."
Ivan stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
"That's not how this works, Jessi.
That's not how we're supposed to work."
"How are we supposed to work?" She said it without sharpness.
Genuinely.
"Because for the last two years, the way we've worked is that I handle things and you answer emails."
He didn't flinch from it.
"I know."
"I'm not trying to punish you.
I just learned not to wait."
"I know that too." He sat down in the chair across from her desk.
"But I'm here now.
So tell me about the sixty days."
She looked at him for a moment.
Then she opened her desk drawer and took out a folded letter.
She slid it across the desk.
He read it.
The language was formal and final.
The building had been sold to a development company.
All residential tenants were to vacate by the end of the following month.
"Wendy has three possible placements," Jessi said.
"Two of them are shared rooms.
Ruth can't do shared rooms — she had a bad episode last year when a temporary aide brought in someone unfamiliar.
It set her back by months." She folded her hands on the desk.
"The third option is a private room in a memory care facility in Chandler.
It's good.
It's actually very good.
But it's twenty-two hundred a month."
"What does she have?"
"Social Security.
Eight hundred and forty dollars."
Ivan did the math without being asked to.
"Thirteen hundred and sixty short."
"Every month."
He set the letter down.
"What were you planning to do?"
Jessi looked out the window.
"I was going to ask my brother for help.
And I was going to pick up freelance work on evenings.
And I was going to figure out the rest somehow."
"Without telling me."
"Without making it your problem."
"Jessi." He waited until she looked at him.
"It's my problem.
You're my wife.
Ruth mattered to your mother.
That makes her matter to me." He paused.
"It should have always made her matter to me."
She was very still.
"I looked at our savings last night," he said.
"If we restructure the car payment and I take on the Henderson contract I've been putting off, we can cover the gap.
Not forever.
But long enough to find a better answer."
Jessi's jaw moved slightly.
She pressed her lips together.
"You already looked at the numbers," she said.
"Last night.
After you went to bed."
She looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved across her face that he hadn't seen in a long time.
Not gratitude exactly.
Something older than that.
"I have to call Wendy back," she said finally.
"I know.
Do you want me to be on the call?"
She picked up her pen.
Set it down again.
"Yes," she said.
"I think I do."
But as Ivan reached for his phone to pull up Wendy's number, Jessi's desk phone rang.
She glanced at the display.
Her face changed.
"That's the facility in Chandler," she said.
"They called me this morning too.
I haven't called back yet."
She picked up the receiver.
Ivan watched her listen.
Watched the color leave her face.
She set the phone down slowly.
May you like
"They gave the private room to someone else this morning," she said.
"It was the last one they had."
