“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “It was just the monthly deposit of seven hundred and eighty dollars, followed by three small cash withdrawals at our window, and then nothing.”
I stared at the screen, the green numbers blurry in the dim light of the bank lobby.
“A woman does not live on toast and tea for forty years and leave twelve dollars,” I said, repeating the words to myself as I walked back out to the parking lot.
The sleet was turning into a heavy, wet snow by the time I returned to the house, finding David standing on the back porch.
He had a rusted flat-head shovel in his hand, his leather work gloves dark with damp soil from the garden plot near the fence.
“The ground is frozen six inches down,” David said, his breath rising in white plumes. “But she spent every afternoon out there last spring, even when her knees were too swollen to walk to the mailbox.”
“She was growing tomatoes, David,” I said, stepping onto the bottom step of the porch.
