The Lobby My Husband Built

And he did not know about the accounts. I have never made a show of money. Ward and I lived under our means our whole lives, in the same farmhouse, driving trucks until they died. But Ward sold that seed business at exactly the right moment, and he invested it plainly and never touched it, and between his estate and my own carefulness, I am, and I say this not with pride but as a plain fact that matters to this story, the largest single depositor in that branch by a distance that is almost funny. When the regional people talk about that branch’s numbers, a meaningful piece of the number they are talking about is me. And more than that: the little scholarship the bank gives every spring to a Fenmore senior, and the fuel-assistance fund that quietly keeps a few old folks from freezing every January, those are not the bank’s money. Those are mine, run through the bank at my request, with my name kept off them because that is how Ward did things and I was not about to change now.

One phone call. I had the regional vice president’s direct number in the drawer, a man named Elgin Whitaker who had shaken my hand at Ward’s funeral and meant it. One phone call, and I could move every dollar I had to the county seat, and I could pull the scholarship and the fuel fund, and I could tell Elgin Whitaker exactly what his new golden boy had done, and Preston Kohl would be cleaning out his very good suits from that office by Friday and would never manage anything larger than a lemonade stand again. I sat at my table and I let myself feel how good that would feel. I am not a saint. It felt very good.