I had approached the teller—a young woman with a polite, manufactured smile—and quietly handed her the check, presenting my driver’s license.
The teller had looked at the routing numbers. Her smile had vanished instantly. All the color drained from her face, leaving her looking as if she had just seen a ghost standing behind me. She didn’t say a word. She hit a button under her desk, frantically waved over the branch manager, and pointed a trembling finger at the computer screen.
Now, I was sitting in a soundproof, glass-walled office. The branch manager, a man named David Callahan, had just locked the door, pulled the vertical blinds shut, and looked at me with an expression of sheer, unadulterated terror.
“Ma’am,” Callahan whispered, his hands visibly shaking as he placed the check gently onto the center of his polished desk as if it were a live grenade. “I need to verify that you understand exactly what this instrument represents.”
I gripped the armrests of the leather chair, my heart hammering a frantic, violent rhythm against my ribs. “We… we assumed Evelyn was suffering from early-stage dementia,” I admitted, my voice barely a whisper. “My father said the checks were fake. A joke.”
