Some way down a narrow country road, there was a small farm which housed the Peters family. Finn, the owner of the house, lived there with his wife Avina, and their five year old son Grayson. Even though they lived on a farm, they had never grown any crops. Finn never felt the need to and was never one for so much physical labor. They had moved there only because Avina’s father was kind enough to provide them with the place as a wedding gift so they would have a nice place for themselves.
However, they were not expecting to be struggling with money as much as they began to. Jobs weren’t paying as high as they could at the time and they started to be unable to keep up with bills and taxes. Finn thought many times about finally using the farm and earning some cash that way, but the fields were covered in boulders and were in no condition to be used. They couldn’t even house any animals since the barn was in no condition either. There was even a leak in it in the far right corner and another a little to the left of that one.
One day, when Finn was walking back to the house, he saw a piece of paper on the door that he hadn’t noticed on his way out. He thought it may have been a piece of paper that Grayson had used and forgot to clean up. So he took the paper, crumpled it up, and walked back into the house. Once inside, he walked over to the trash can and threw out the paper. They all spent their day like any other normal day. And they would do the same for the next week, the piece of crumpled up paper all but forgotten about.
On a beautiful tuesday afternoon, everything was just as it had been for the past week. Avina was inside washing the dishes, Finn sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, and Grayson playing with some toys right out front where he could still be seen by his mother. Grayson didn’t notice and two men were there until they had passed him. One of average height with blond hair and the other slightly taller with a dark, almost black, brown.
Both Finn and Avina were simply talking about anything that came to mind when a loud knock at the front door interrupted their conversation. Finn placed his newspaper down, stood from the chair, and walked over to the door. When he opened it he found two men. The Blond with blue eyes, and the brunette with hazel eyes.
“Can I help you?” asked Finn.
“We’ve come here regarding the notice left at your door about a week ago,” replied the brunette.
Finn was confused to say the least. He had no recollection of any kind of notice that was ever left on the door. Unless Avina found it and forgot to tell him. But even so, this seemed like something important and he highly doubted that she wouldn’t have remembered.
“Are you sure you have the right address,” Finn started, “I don’t remember there being any sort of notice.”
The brunette sighed and opened his mouth to speak. But before he could even begin, he was interrupted by the blond, “Look, we’ve had a lot of people try to pull that one and it never works, so you’re either ready to go or you’re not.”
Finn felt even more confused than he was less than a minute ago and it was evident on his face. So the brunette decided to take over before the blond could say anything else.
“The paper was left here last tuesday, a week ago, right on the door. Do you think someone may have not looked at what it was and had just gotten rid of it?” he paused for a second, “Maybe even you?”
Finn thought back. Maybe Grayson saw it but didn’t understand since he’s too young. But the more he thought about it, the more he began to realize. It must have been that piece of paper he had thought to just be something that Grayson had left and forgot to clean up. As he came to this realization, it showed quite clearly on his face.
“You see, I knew you knew about it,” stated the blond, still not believing the man in the house’s earlier story.
“No, I really didn’t,” Finn argued back, “I didn’t realize that that was what the paper was. I had originally thought that my son must have left it there and had forgotten to clean it up so I never actually looked closely at it. I swear to you, I had no idea that it was something so important.”
The brunette looked at Finn sadly, “Well, I’m afraid we can’t excuse your mistakes. We’re here for our job and we cannot just allow you to avoid this even if it wasn’t intentional.”
The blond on the other hand looked quite pleased. Something told Finn that this was his favorite part of his job and it didn’t sit right with the man.
“And what exactly was this notice about?” Finn finally asked the brunette, trying his best to now avoid the blond.
“A notice for your eviction.”
Finn stood there still for a moment, unable to know how to respond.
So the brunette continued, “I would give you time to pack some things if that was in my power, but being that I’m not supposed to let you and we’re on a tight schedule, we need you out of the house now.”
Finn nodded and said wistfully, “Let me just get my wife and we’ll leave.”
Once he turned around, the blond looked to his partner and gestured to the boy in the yard. The brunette knew what he was being told and began to walk down the steps, making his way towards the boy.
Meanwhile, in the house, Finn was telling Avina about what was going on and how they were going to have to leave. To say that she was upset would be an understatement. Because of how sudden it all was, they would not be able to bring much more than a couple snacks for the road. Since the dishes that they had were her great grandparents’ she decided that she would rather them break than to let them be possibly sold or broken by someone else. So she asked Finn to help her make a small pile of them in the yard and let the people who would clean up the place take care of the broken dishes.
Once they finished they walked back around to the front of the house to where their son was and saw the brunette kneeling down, talking to Grayson. The closer they got, the more they could hear. He was telling Grayson about the situation in the simplest way for him to understand as possible. They could tell that their son was just upset about this as they were, but there was nothing they could do.
“I just have one question for you,” Finn began to ask the brunette, “Why exactly do we need to leave?”
The brunette sighed for the second time that day and responded with, “You have not been able to pay off many bills in full for quite a while and they are usually either very late or never paid. I’m not sure as to why but I can tell that you don’t possess that great of an amount of money.”
The blond began walking away from them all saying, “Well let’s go, we don’t have all day. We can drop you somewhere in town but the rest is up to you to figure out.”
Grayson began to try and put at least one of his toys away. But before he could, his mother was already taking his hand and leading him to everyone else, “There’s no need. We won’t be coming back.”
He was only thankful that he was able to keep holding on to the one that was in his hand.
The small family was greatly upset about everything that was going on. Finn was feeling the worst for he knew he could have at least made a plan for them all if he had just looked at that one piece of paper. But he had only waved it off and thought nothing of it. This was the consequence that he would have to deal with on his own. His own mistake that no one could change now.
