The brass key to safe deposit box number 214 had a tiny, jagged scratch on its bow shaped like a miniature arrow. I noticed it as I handed the key to Clara Mercer, who had been running the branch since my children were in diapers.
Clara took the key, her thick reading glasses hanging from a beaded chain around her neck. She led me past the low security gate into the small vault room, where the overhead fluorescent bulb gave off a dry, high-pitched hum that made my ears itch.
Together, we inserted our keys into the lock of the long metal box. The dual mechanisms turned with a double click that echoed off the rows of steel drawers. Clara slid the box out, her movements slow and deliberate, before she stepped back to give me privacy.
Inside the box, resting on top of three yellowing land deeds from the late seventies, sat a single, heavy leather pouch. It was secured with a brass zipper that had grown stiff with age, smelling faintly of dried paper and copper polish.
By one o’clock, the pouch lay on the white tablecloth of my dining room. My brother, Raymond, sat opposite me, his fingers already tapping the glass of his watch with a quick, nervous rhythm.
“Just open it, Evelyn,” Raymond said, his voice clipped and dry. “We have the probate filing deadline next month, and the court needs the exact valuation by Friday.”
I pulled the zipper back, the brass teeth resisting before they parted. Inside the worn leather, wrapped in a single strip of plain brown cardboard, was a thick stack of United States currency.
Raymond stopped tapping his watch. He reached into the pouch and pulled the stack out, his breath catching in his throat for a second before he spread the bills across the white cloth like a deck of cards.
“They are all hundreds,” Raymond said, his eyes scanning the green pile. “Four bundles of ten thousand. But look at this corner.”
He held up a bill, pointing a blunt finger at the margin beside Benjamin Franklin’s portrait. A tiny, violet ink stamp shaped like an arrow was pressed clearly into the paper, accompanied by two hand-stamped initials, L. T.
