“Goddammit, August, I didn’t do it to spite you!”
At least Liam has nothing to worry about, I thought morosely.
I gripped my head between both hands until my skull stopped throbbing and my eyesight cleared. My track record with boys was so pitiful-four days with Liam, one night with August. Was there something wrong with me? Before pulling back into the light morning traffic, I picked up my phone and texted my question to Sarah on the off-chance she’d gotten out of bed before noon.
By the time I found a parking spot, my hands were still shaking. I thought of Mom’s silver-lining theory, that if you looked long enough at one, it would outshine everything else. The silver lining of today: solicitors would stop hounding me to inform me of rising interest fees.
As I entered the bank, I took the check out of my wallet and smoothed the crinkles to make sure the ink hadn’t faded overnight, but all three zeroes were still there. I got in line behind an old woman hunched over a walker, the knobs of her curved spine pressing against her flowered blouse. She glanced over her sunken shoulder at me and smiled. I smiled but then wondered if she’d meant to smile at someone else.
“You’re the girl from the inn, aren’t you?”
The trembling subsided then, replaced by surprise that made me go rigid. And mute . . .
“You served me a lovely brunch a couple weeks ago. I called to make a reservation, but they told me the inn was closing indefinitely. Is that right?”
“It changed”-I cleared my voice-“ownership.”
“What a shame. What a shame. And just when the food was getting good. You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the chef?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “She’s still in Boulder.”
“Oh. How wonderful. My son and his wife run a restaurant in town. You might’ve heard about it? The Silver Bowl?”
“I don’t go out much.”
“Next,” a bank teller called.
The hunched woman paid her no mind. “Anyway, she used to do the cooking, but she came down with something called algeria or agora, and it made her very fatigued. So they’re on the market for a new chef. You wouldn’t happen to know if the one from the inn would be interested?”
“I could ask her.”
“Next!” the teller called out louder.
“Great. Let me get you my phone number.” As she dug through her bag, its contents spilled onto the floor.
I gathered everything up for her, then hooked it on the walker.
“Ladies, I don’t have all day,” the teller said, exasperated.
“You know what, why don’t I just tell her to call the restaurant?” I asked.
The old woman nodded, and her wispy gray hair frolicked around her face. “Tell her to say Charlotte sent her.”
The teller cleared her throat.
“The young are always in such a hurry,” Charlotte huffed as she hobbled forward, her walker scraping the floor.
For a second, I thought she was talking about me because the teller was well past her prime, but Charlotte didn’t know me, so she couldn’t know at what speed I lived my life.
But it was true. I was in a hurry.
In a hurry to get to the bottom of Cassandra Morgan’s feat.
In a hurry for the duel to be over.
In a hurry to get back in August’s good graces.
A moment later, another teller called out, “Next.”
I smoothed out the check again before handing it over, along with my debit card and a picture ID.
The employee squinted at my ID, then at my card, then flipped the check over. “Sign at the back, please.” She tapped a long acrylic nail against the check.
I signed it nervously, my name looping off the faint line. This felt too good to be true. I expected the check to bounce and security guards to escort me away for questioning. I moistened my lips with the tip of my tongue and waited as the teller clicked and clicked her computer keypad with those long nails of hers.
Finally, she printed out a sheet of paper and handed it over. “Your balance.”
I snatched it, and my heart stuttered to a stop when I saw the new number. “Um. I think there’s a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“Are you sure this is my account?”
“Are you Ness Marianne Clark?”
“Yes.”
She leveled her gaze on her monitor, clicked on her keyboard again. “Then there’s no mistake.”
My heart hurtled around my ribcage now.
“Were you expecting a higher balance?” she asked when I still hadn’t moved. As I read the number over-and over-she added, “We have some great investment opportunities. I’d be more than happy to set up an appointment.”
I licked my lips again. Was there any other way of depositing money into someone’s account? “Can you give me a printout of the latest activity? Wire transfers or checks or . . .”
“Sure thing.”
Her printer burst to life and spat out another sheet of paper, which I all but ripped from her fingers this time. When I saw the name on the check that had been deposited into my account barely an hour ago, my hands started shaking anew. Or maybe they’d never stopped shaking.
“Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely.
“Everything all right, honey?” Charlotte asked from her teller’s window.
I nodded even though nothing was really all right. It was all wrong. “I’ll . . . I’ll-Um. I’ll tell Evelyn to call.” I waved, then slipped my phone out of my bag and, fingers stumbling over the slick screen, I dialed August.
It went to voicemail.
Ugh!