Solve the equation using the distributive property and properties of equality. Read this excerpt from “Poor Harold.”

A room in Washington Square South. By the light of a candle, a young man in tousled hair and dressing gown is writing furiously at a little table. A clock within strikes seven.

A door at the back opens, and a young woman looks in, sleepily. She frowns. The young man looks up guiltily.

SHE. What are you doing?

HE. (innocently) Writing.

SHE. So I see. (She comes in, and sits down. It may be remarked that a woman's morning appearance, in dishabille, is a severe test of both looks and character; she passes that test triumphantly. She looks at the young man, and asks) – Poetry?

HE. (hesitatingly) No. . . .

SHE. (continues to look inquiry).

HE. (finally) A letter. . . .

SHE. (inflexibly) – To whom?

HE. (defiantly) To my wife!

SHE. Oh! That's all right. I thought perhaps you were writing to your father.

HE. (bitterly) My father! Why should I write to my father? Isn't it enough that I have broken his heart and brought disgrace upon him in his old age –

SHE. Disgrace? Nonsense! Anybody might be named as a co-respondent in a divorce case.

HE. Not in Evanston, Illinois. Not when you are the local feature of a notorious Chicago scandal. Not when your letters to the lady are published in the newspapers. – Oh, those letters!

SHE. Were they such incriminating letters, Harold?

HAROLD. Incriminating? How can you ask that, Isabel? They were perfectly innocent letters, such as any gentleman poet might write to any lady poetess. How was I to know that a rather plain-featured woman I sat next to at a Poetry Dinner in Chicago was conducting a dozen love-affairs? How was I to know that my expressions of literary regard would look like love-letters to her long-suffering husband? That's the irony of it: I'm perfectly blameless.
Negative 5 (a + 3) = negative 55

What is the value of a?
Negative 14
Negative 8
8
14