Chapter 6: Primary Holder

The bank on Rice Street opened at nine.

We were standing at the door at eight fifty, the three of us, with the shoebox in Dot's arms.

Keir had slept on Dot's couch. Neither of them would let me go alone.

"You don't have to come in," I told him.

"I know," he said. "I'd like to stay outside the glass, if that's all right. It's your account."

I thought about that for a second. Nobody in six years had ever said those words to me.

A young man in a gray vest unlocked the door and looked at the three of us.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm Freya Teller," I said. "I think I'm the primary holder on an account here. I'd like to see it."

He was kind about it.

He asked for my license and my last four digits, and then he sat me down at a desk with a plant and typed for a long time.

His face changed.

"Ms. Teller," he said. "We've been trying to reach you."

"I know. I only found out yesterday."

"I'll need to ask you to wait one moment."

He went into a glass office and talked quietly to a woman in a blazer.

Both of them looked at me through the glass, and I made myself sit still.

Dot took the chair next to mine and put her hand on my knee.

The banker came back with a thick stack of paper and set it on the desk between us.

"This is the account history," he said. "I'm going to start with the opening. You can stop me at any time."

"Go ahead."

"The account was opened on June fourteenth, six years ago.

"That was the week of your marriage.

"The first deposit was a wire for two million, three hundred and ten thousand dollars."

I heard Dot breathe in.

"From what?" I said.

"The memo says a wrongful death settlement. Teller versus a freight company."

My father's name was at the top of the page. Walter J. Teller.