I sat in the driver’s seat of my Buick, my hands gripping the vinyl steering wheel until my knuckles ached. The key was in the ignition, but I did not turn it. I stared at the glove compartment, trying to reconstruct the last six months of my life.
Perhaps I had signed something during one of my dizzy spells in July, or perhaps Robert had simply misspoken on the phone. A son does not steal two hundred and eighty thousand dollars from his mother. It was a misunderstanding, a modern banking term I did not comprehend.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my brass door keys, their heavy edges cold against my palm. For forty years at the pharmacy counter, I had managed every penny. I knew the price of a prescription bottle, the cost of a three-dollar cup of coffee, the exact margin on a box of bandages. I had never misplaced a decimal point.
