Harlan Grote stood by the little island counter where they keep the deposit slips and the pens on chains. He had on his work jacket and his cap, and he had his bank book in his hand. He had followed us all the way into town.
Later Mom told me what she figured. He had watched her put on her good coat. He knew what day it was.
He had gone to the drive-up the minute it opened, out of habit, the way he did every first of the month, and his deposit was not there. Then he had come around the corner and seen my car in the lot.
He stood there and looked at my mother.
She did not put the money away. She turned around at the window with the rest of those bills still fanned out in her hand, and she looked right back at him.
Nobody in the lobby moved. Georgette had stopped at the door on her way out. Amos was standing on the step outside with his hand on the rail.
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The young girl at the next window had stopped typing. Mrs. Ferris stood very still behind her counter with her hands flat on the wood.
Harlan opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He looked at the bank book in his hand, and I watched his face go a dull red from the collar up.
“Willa,” he said. “The deposit didn’t come.”
“It came, Harlan,” my mother said. Her voice was perfectly calm. “It just came to me.”
He looked at me then. I did not say anything. I did not move. I stood exactly where I was, one step back, and I kept my face as still as I could.
“Lacey put you up to this,” he said, but there was no fight in it. It came out tired.
“Lacey found out,” Mom said. “I’m the one who put me up to it. I called them myself. I signed it myself.” She held up the bills, just a little. “I’ve got an account now. Just my name on it.”
Harlan looked down at the floor. Then he looked at the deposit slips on the counter beside him, like he did not know what to do with his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was so low that Mrs. Ferris leaned forward to hear him.
“I owe money at the boat,” he said. “And I owe some fellas from the card tables over there. I got behind and I kept thinking one good Friday and I’d put it all back.” He swallowed. “I was ashamed to tell you, Willa. That’s the truth of it. I was too ashamed.”
Mom looked at him for a long moment.
“You could have been ashamed and still let me buy my heart pills,” she said.
That was all she said. She did not raise her voice. She did not say anything about the thirty-four thousand dollars, or the forty on Fridays, or the broken shoelace.
She just said that one plain thing, in front of the people she had known her whole life, and let it sit there in the sunshine on the old tile floor.
Harlan did not have anything to say back. There was nothing to say back.