Chapter 23: Front of the Photo

The new card came in a plain envelope from the bank on Rice Street, on the Friday before Keir left.

I opened it standing at Dot's counter, with the lunch crowd going on behind me.

It was black, with raised silver letters on the front.

FREYA TELLER.

I turned it over and read the back, and the number meant nothing, and I read it again anyway.

The young man in the gray vest had written a sticky note on the envelope.

*Your card. Your account. Nobody else is on it. Congratulations, Ms. Teller.*

I put it in my wallet, behind the forty dollars I had left home with.

"That's the one you're going to use?" Dot asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

"It's the only one I have."

"Good. Come eat."

We ate at the big table in the back of the diner after closing, the five of us.

Dot had made a pot roast, which was an event.

Keir sat on my left with his sleeves rolled.

Brittany sat across from me with her hair in a net, so tired she kept closing her eyes between bites.

The cook sat at the end and said nothing, because he was eating.

At the head of the table sat my father's toolbox.

I had brought it down that afternoon.

Nobody had asked why.

"I have an announcement," I said.

I slid my laptop onto the table next to the roast.

"The Orwells are not allowed to say it's rude to have a laptop at dinner," Dot said.

"It's not an Orwell dinner."

"Then I'm allowing it."

I opened the airline's site and typed in the airport code, and the destination, and I did not ask anyone's permission.

Rome appeared on the screen.

It was a small, ordinary-looking list of flights.